180 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. II. 



tary of that Society, renders it, with a shade only of difference. " Pour 

 la science et le pays." 



It is to be expected that Breton will, in a few generations, disappear 

 — as Cornish, a cognate speech, has disappeared from the opposite 

 peninsula. 



SURVIVALS OF GOTHS AND IBERIANS IN THE PYREN.EAN VALLEYS. 



At Satander, in Spain, another local type was found. We were told 

 by the French officers of our steamer that we should find at this well- 

 known port the Spanish women loading and unloading vessels, while 

 their husbands would be lying about in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes 

 In a manner this was true. Such women are in Spain, but scarcel}^ 

 Spaniards. Only in Santander and Bilbao are they to be found. They 

 are not Basques, but seem to be a peculiar people in many ways. At 

 these two ports, large quantities of iron ore are shipped in steamers for 

 English ports. The ore is brought down on railway cars to the ship's 

 side, and carried by women, in baskets, on their heads, to the vessel's 

 hold. Men shovel the ore into the baskets and often help to lift them 

 upon the women's heads. Fine, tall women they are too, of erect 

 bearing ; skirts tucked up ; a coarse sacking used for a shawl or an 

 apron, for the ore is ochreous and dirty. The weights they carry ar 

 heavy, but they work with a will ; it would be a hardship to change the 

 system suddenly. One day we climbed to the Exhibition grounds upon 

 the hill, and on the sands of the upper harbor (the tide was out) we saw 

 hundreds of people, seeming very small from the height at which we 

 were. I thought they were picking up shellfish or seaweed, and to know 

 the reason of the assemblage, asked a couple of Spanish women who 

 were there what it was all about. They pointedto thd railroad in course 

 of construction along the shore. Men were loading sand into baskets, 

 which women were carrying on their heads to the embankment. I 

 could but smile as I thought of Manning, Macdonald & Co., or Conmee 

 & Middleton, making out a pay-sheet for a lot of women, doing the 

 work they could here do with steam shovels. But the fisher folk in the 

 north of Scotland are no better ; the men have done their duty when 

 they bring the boats to shore ; the women carry the creels of fish to 

 market and all over the country side. I wish I had had time to 

 ascertain the ethnological characteristics of these people. They belong, 

 I should suppose, to some very ancient stock. 



The French consul at Santander, a distinguished savant, told me that 

 in no place did the populations of neighbouring districts differ more 

 thnn in the north of Spain which is mountainous, the main chain 



