Of course, in
the nature of things, the Phoenicians must have been there and the
Greeks, doubtless, if they ever got outside of the Pillars of Hercules;
the Romans, of course, must have settled and civilized and then
Christianized the province. It is next neighbor to that province of
Asturias in which alone the Arabs failed to conquer the Goths, and from
which Spain was to live and grow again and recover all her losses from
the Moors; but what the share of San Sebastian was in this heroic fate,
again I must leave the Basques to say. They would doubtless say it with
sufficient self-respect, for wherever we came in contact that day with
the Basque nature we could not help imagining in it a sense of racial
merit equaling that of the Welsh themselves, who are indeed another
branch of the same immemorial Iberian stock, if the Basques are
Iberians. Like the Welsh, they have the devout tradition that they never
were conquered, but yielded to circumstances when these became too
strong for them.
Among the ancient Spanish liberties which were restricted by the
consolidating monarchy from age to age, the Basque _fueros,_ or rights,
were the oldest; they lasted quite to our own day; and although it is
known to more ignorant men that these privileges (including immunity
from conscription) have now been abrogated, the custodian of the House
of Provincial Deputies, whom our driver took us to visit, was such a
glowing Basque patriot that he treated them as in full force.
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