ns of land belonging to
themselves. Nothing can be more uniform than the arrangement and
construction of Navarrese houses of this class, which are well adapted
to the wants and tastes of the race of men who inhabit them, and to the
extremes of heat and cold for which the climate of that part of Spain is
remarkable. The walls are generally of stone, of which the neighbouring
mountains yield an abundant supply; glass windows are rare, and replaced
by wooden shutters; the door, usually of oak, and of great solidity, is
hung in a low archway of granite blocks. The entrance is into a small
clay-floored room or vestibule, answering a variety of purposes. Here
are seen implements of agriculture--sometimes a plough, or the heavy
iron prongs with which the Basques and Navarrese are accustomed
laboriously to turn up the ground in places too steep for the use of
oxen; mules or ponies stand tethered here, waiting their turn of duty in
the fields, or on the road; and here sacks of vegetables and piles of
straw or maize-ears are temporarily deposited, till they can be placed
in the granary, usually in the upper part of the house. At the further
end, or on one side of this vestibule, a door opens into the stable or
cowshed, and on the other side is the kitchen, which the family
habitually occupy. An immense arched chimney projects far into the
last-named apartment, and under it is a stone hearth, slightly raised
above the tiled floor. Around, and upon this tiled hearth, during the
long winter evenings, the peasant and his family establish themselves;
the room is lighted by a glimmering oil-lamp, and, more effectually, by
the bright wood-fire, which crackles and sparkles as the rain-drops or
snow-flakes occasionally fall through the aperture of the chimney. The
men smoke and talk, and repose themselves after the fatigues of the day;
the women spin and attend to the pots of coarse red earth, in which
various preparations of pork, eggs, or salt-fish, with beans and
_garbanzos_, (a sort of large pea of excellent flavour,) the whole
plentifully seasoned with oil and red pepper, stew and simmer upon the
embers. Above stairs are the sleeping and store rooms, the divisions
between which often consist of slight walls of reeds, plastered over and
whitewashed.

Besides the humble dwellings above described, many of these mountain
villages contain two or three houses of larger size and greater
pretension, belonging to hidalgos or country gentlemen