the car, and having a lot of red tape about getting it
back again in an hour or two; so we left Balzac, as I have named it, at
the last French town and rowed across, on past the first Spanish town,
Irun, to a much older, more picturesque one--Fuenterrabia. A
particularly handsome boatman wanted to row us, but Brown would do it
himself, either to show how well he can manage the oars, or else because
the boatman had abnormally long eyelashes, and Brown is rather sick of
eyelashes.

Even crossing the river and going down towards the mouth of the stream
(with a huge, old ruined castle towering up to mark Fuenterrabia) was
quite thrilling, because of the things in history that have happened all
around. The estuary runs down to the sea between mountains of wild and
awesome shapes. One of them is named after Wellington, because it is
supposed to look like his profile lying down, and the other mountains
had a chance to see his real profile many times, though I'll be bound
his enemies never saw his back. He fought among them--both mountains and
enemies, and the latter were some of Napoleon's smartest marshals. He
took a whole army across the ford in the Bidassoa, attacked Soult, and
chased him all the way up the mountains to the very summit of La Rhune,
a great conical peak high up in the sky. Another thing was the Isle des
Faisans, right in the middle of the river, where Philippe and Louis the
Fourteenth fixed everything up about Louis' Spanish bride. It's the
smallest island you ever saw; you wouldn't think there would be room for
a whole King of Spain and a King of France to stand on it at the same
time, much less sign contracts.

When our boat touched Spanish soil on the beach below Fuenterrabia, two
rather ferocious-looking Spaniards in uncomfortable uniforms were
waiting for us. They had the air of demanding "your money or your life";
but after all it was only the extraordinarily high, ugly collars of
their overcoats which gave them such a formidable appearance. They were
custom-house officers guarding the coast, though how they see over those
collars to find out what's going on under their noses I don't know.
Brown says that soldiers at Madrid have to dress like that in winter to
protect themselves from the terrible icy winds, and as Madrid sets the
fashion for everything in Spain, the provincial soldiers have to choke
themselves in the same way.

It did seem to me that the very air of Spain was different from across
t