woodcutter's axe. There was no further
need to be wary, for this was Spain. We were over the border, and now my
companions could breathe freely in every sense. Before they had passed
the imaginary line they were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes,
conducted back and interned, for they had that about their persons which
betrayed that they were no innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a
scud was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles by the
wayside, and an advance party of one was thrown out to reconnoitre. The
precautions were superfluous, if we knew but all. From the 15th of July,
the French patrols had got the hint to be blind. So lax was the cordon
on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a
repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might
have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a
solitary French uniform.

The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays
all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to
realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On one side extend the
plains of France, washed by the greenish-blue waves of the Bay of
Biscay, and studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of Fontarabia,
St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision
fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of
Navarre and Guipuzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from
grass and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting
with ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in
the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands.
Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her
gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of
guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high
moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the
entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent,
and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered
no molestation; but others might not have escaped unpleasantness. The
agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had to pay toll, if the
story were true that a few of the dispersed "Black Legion" had got off
with their rifles and started a joint-stock company in the
bush-whacking line, and were doing a pretty fair business.

The descent on the Spanis