There are few peoples more deserving of study than the Basques, and few countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green--the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread, _artoa_, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its wooden façade and carved projecting buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms. In Vizcaya a large vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark velvet spaces in the whitewashed front of the farm; in Guipúzcoa many houses have no balcony or trellis, but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often entirely cover all the windows. From the windows hang long strings of red piments or white onions; above the door there is frequently an ancient stone coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the founders and the date, and above this a cross or the letters I. H. S. The house is thus half sacred. After the father’s death, the eldest son becomes “Lord of the house, etcheco-jauna,” while the younger sons often emigrate.