The Bidassoa is one of the world's historic rivers. It forms the Atlantic frontier between France and Spain, and was the scene of Wellington's celebrated "Passage of the Bidassoa" in 1813, also of a still more famous historical event which took place centuries before on the Ile des Faisans.
The Nivelle is a tiny stream which comes to light on Spanish soil, over the crest of the Pyrenees, and flows rapidly down to the sea at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, on the shores of the Gulf of Gascony.
The Ministry for the Interior in France classes all these chief rivers as _flottable_ for certain classes of boats and barges through a portion of their length, and each of them as _navigable_ for a few leagues from the sea.
Four great "Routes Nationales" cross the Basses-Pyrénées. They are the legitimate successors of the "Routes Royales" of monarchial days. The "Route Royale de Paris à Madrid, par Vittoria et Burgos," the very same over which Charles Quint travelled to Paris, via Amboise, as the guest of François Premier, passes via Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. It is a veritable historic highway throughout every league of its length.
The climate of the Basses-Pyrénées is by no means as warm as its latitude would seem to bespeak, the snow-capped Pyrenees keeping the temperature somewhat low. Pau and Luchon in the interior (as well as Bayonne and Biarritz on the coast) seem, curiously enough, to be somewhat milder than the open country between. The Pyrenees, though less overrun and less exploited than the Alps, are not an unknown world to be ventured into only by heroes and adventurers. They are what the French call a "new world" lively in aspect, infinitely varied, and as yet quite unspoiled, take them as a whole. This is a fact which makes the historical monuments and souvenirs of the region the more appealing in interest, particularly to one who has "done" the conventionally overrun resorts of the Tyrol, Egypt or Norway; and the country here is far more accessible. Furthermore the comforts of modern travel, as regards palace hotels and sleeping-cars, if less highly developed, are more to be remarked. One lives bountifully throughout the whole of the French slopes of the Pyrenees, from a table well supplied with many exotic articles of food such as truffles, and _salaisons_ of all sorts, fresh mountain lake trout, and those delightful _crouchades_ and _cassoulets_, which in the more populous centres are only occasional, expensive luxuries.