nsr NOETH AMBEICA. 27 



G-reeks, from Iberus, or Ebro, the river with which they were best acquainted. He, as 

 well as Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Appian, aud other authors, also uses the term " Hispa- 

 nia " which was first employed, it is believed, by the Phœnicians, from the number of 

 rabbits {shapanim) that they observed when they began to colonize the southern shores 

 of the peninsula. Diodorus has anticipated the fruits of modern research or theory by 

 applying- the term " Celtiberians " to the mixed race formed by the union of the Aryan 

 Celts with the original inhabitants. The Iberians and the Celts, he says, were long at war 

 concerning the country to which they both had claims, but they at last agreed to occupy 

 it in common. Having been by intermarriage fused into a single nation, thev took a name 

 which implied their double origin. Notwithstanding this clear statement, Latham is dis- 

 posed to conclude that the Celts did not get much further south than the Graroune, and 

 that the name Celtiberian indicates a general resemblance to the Celtic type rather than 

 an actual fusion of the two races. ' 



The Vascones are accepted by many ethnologists as the etymological ancestors of 

 both Basques and Gascons. M. Ferdinand Hoefer, however, is inclined to assign that 

 place to the Vaccaei, whom Diodorus characterizes as the most civilized of the neighbors 

 of the Celtiberians. - The root of the alternative term, " Euskarian," may be found, 

 perhaps, in the Ausci (the Avanioi of Strabo).^ 



Some of the qualities and cvtstoms attributed to the Iberians and Celtiberians by 

 Strabo, Diodorus, Appiau, and other writers, are still met with among the Basques. Among 

 these may be mentioned the communal land system, the law of primogeniture without 

 regard to sex, the employment of women in field labor, and the peculiar ceremony known 

 as the couvade. As to this last custom, indeed, M. Jules Vinson, who is a foremost 

 authority on all Basque questions, denies that any modern traveller has discovered it in 

 the Basque provinces. The only basis for the belief in its existence is, he maintains, a 

 passage in Strabo, ' which has not been proved to refer to the ancestors of the Basques, 

 aud some allusions in modern works. These allusions always relate to the people of 

 Bearu, from whose dialect the word couvade is borrowed. On the other hand, Lafitau, 

 in his famous treatise, in calling attention to certain special points of resemblance between 

 the manners of new-world and old-world nations, writes as follows : " Such for exam- 

 ple, is the custom prevailing in certain communities which obliges the husband to take 

 to his bed when the time for the wife's accouchement has arrived and to be there tended 

 by the latter, with all the care usually expended on such occasions on the mother of the 

 child. For although this was a religious custom, it was nevertheless a very peculiar one. 

 Now, I have found it among the Iberians, who were the earliest inhabitants of Spain and 

 also among the first occupants of the island of Corsica, as well as among the Tibarenians 

 of Asia. It also prevails in our own time in some of our provinces bordering on Spain, 

 where the proceeding is termed faire couvade. This same usage is found among the 

 Japanese and among the Caribs and G-alibis of America."' " And as to its survival, in 

 remote districts of the Pyrenean provinces, even to the present day, M. Eugène Cordier, 

 as the result of personal enquiries, learned that, although it had fallen into discredit, it 



' Ethnology of the British Colonies, p. 24. * Bibliotheca Historioa, v. 34. 



'' Geogiaphica, iv. 2, pp. C. 190, 191. ■■ Geogr. ill. 4, p. C, 165. 



' Mœurs des Sauvages Américains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps, i. 49, 50. 



