THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



457 



At first glance all this seems to belie our assertion that unity 

 of language is often a historical product of political causes. For 

 it may justly be objected that the Portuguese type of language, 

 although in general limited by the political boundary along 

 the east, has crossed th6 northern frontier and now prevails 

 throughout the Spanish province of Galicia; or again, that the 

 French-Spanish political frontier has been powerless to restrain 

 the advance, far toward the Strait of Gibraltar, of the Catalan 

 speech, closely allied as we have said to the dialects of Provence 



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in southern France ; that not even the slight line of demarcation 

 between these last two lies along the Pyrenean political bound- 

 ary, but considerably to the north of it, so that Catalan is to-day 

 spoken over nearly a whole department in France ; and, lastly, 

 that the Basque language, utterly removed from any affiliation 

 with all the rest, lies neither on one side nor the other of this 

 same Pyrenean frontier, but extends down both slopes of the 

 mountain range, an insert into both national domains of France 

 and Spain. These objections are, however, the very basis of our 

 contention that language and nationality often stand in a definite 

 relation to one another : for, if we examine the history of Spain 



