202 RAMBLES OP A NATURALIST. 



over Spain and Italy, and having conquered Sicily 

 he peopled it with Euskarians. After Siculus, the 

 race of Tarsis recovered the supreme power, which 

 they maintained until the time when the great le- 

 gislator, Abides, having voluntarily renounced the 

 throne, organised Iberia into a vast federal republic, 

 1014 years before the foundation of Rome. From 

 Abides, or his contemporaries, have descended all 

 the dukes or chiefs of the federal republics, all the 

 heroes in which Spain glories, and more particularly 

 Pelages and his companions. Thus, in accordance 

 with this genealogy, the Spanish nation is still 

 governed by a Euskarian or Basque family, and 

 Queen Isabella is descended in a direct line from 

 Tarsis and from Noah ! 



We thus see that even in the present day the 

 Basque historians write under the influence of pre- 

 conceived ideas which totally exclude the possibility 

 of discussion. This is the more to be regretted, be- 

 cause if they could lay aside the prejudices of a false 

 national pride, their researches would undoubtedly 

 have led to singular discoveries. From the midst 

 even of their exaggerations we may deduce one im- 

 portant result. Thus, for instance, we find in the 

 Euskarian language the etymology of a great number 

 of the names of rivers and mountains, and of provinces 

 where the Basque race no longer exists.* This fact, 



* Larramendi, Astorloa, de Erro and the Abbe d'Hiarce, may be 

 named among the authors who have given way to exaggeration in 

 their etymological systems. Thus, for instance, they have attempted 

 to prove that the names of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, together 

 with those of Helicon, Cyprus, Delos, &c ., were primitive Basque 



