on, San Sebastian, 1896). There
are excellent chapters on the Basque Provinces in the _Introduccion a la
Historia Natural, y a la Geografia Fisica de Espana_, by D. Guillermo
Bowles (Madrid, 1775). _El Guipuzcoano instruido_ (San Sebastian, 1780), in
the form of a dictionary, gives full details of the life, the rights,
duties and obligations of a Basque citizen of that date. The _Diccionario
Geografico-Historico de Espana_, tome i., ii. _El Reyno de Navarra Senorio
de Vizcaya y Provincias de Alava y Guipuzcoa_ (Madrid, 1802), is full of
local information, but with a strong bias in favour of the central
government. The best works on the various editions of the _fueros_ are
_Historia de la Legislacion ... civil de Espana_, by A. Marichalar, Marques
de Montesa, and Cayetano Manrique; _Fueros de Navarra Vizcaya, Guipuzcoa y
Alava_ (Madrid, 2nd ed., 1868); and the _Noticia de las cosas memorables de
Guipuzcoa_, by D. Pablo de Gorosabel (Tolosa, 1899-1901), the last volume
of which by C. de Echegaray, gives the legislative acts down to May 1900.
_Las Provincias Vascongadas a Fines de la Edad Media_, by D. Carmelo de
Echegaray (San Sebastian, 1895), is excellent. There is a _Historia de
Bizcaya_, by Dr E. de Labayru, and a _Compendio_ of the same by Fermin
Herran (Bilbao, 1903). D. Carmelo de Echegaray, Cronista de las Provincias
Vascongadas, with his colleagues D. Serapio Mugica, F. Soraluce, and other
historians, has examined, catalogued and indexed the municipal archives of
all the towns, without which no true history can be written. Several
discoveries of important missing documents and MSS. were thus made. The
development of the Basque mining industry is fully described in _Las Minas
de hierro de la provincia de Vizcaya, progressos realizados en esta region
derde 1870 hasta 1899_ (Bilbao, 1900).
(W. WE.)
BASQUES, a people inhabiting the three Basque Provinces--Biscay, Alava and
Guipuzcoa--and Navarre in Spain, and the arrondissement of Bayonne and
Mauleon in France. The number of those who can be considered in any sense
pure Basques is [v.03 p.0486] probably about 600,000 in Europe, with
perhaps 100,000 emigrants in the Americas, chiefly in the region of La
Plata in South America. The word Basques is historically derived from
_Vascones_, which, written _Wascones_, has also given the name _Gascons_ to
a very different race. The Basques call themselves _Eskualdunak_, _i.e._
"those who possess the _Eskuara_," and their cou
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