THE BAY OF BISCAY. 215 



to attack and overcome the whale, which was then 

 very frequently met with in our seas. It was no doubt 

 while in the pursuit of these animals, that they left 

 along our coasts those colonies which, at the present 

 clay, in the midst of populations of very different 

 origin, still present the incontestable impress of 

 the Euskarian type.* The Basques carried their 

 fishing excursions to very considerable distances, 

 and they even frequented Iceland and Greenland 

 at a very remote period; and if we are to believe 

 some authors, they discovered the banks of New- 

 foundland and Canada about a hundred years before 

 Christopher Columbus first set foot on the shores of 

 America. 



The Euskarian race is remarkable for the extreme 

 beauty of its type, the principal ethnological cha- 

 racters of which are a rounded cranium, a broad and 



* The inhabitants of some portion of the islands of the coast of 

 Brittany and of several of the seaports of Normandy, no doubt owe 

 the characters by which they are distinguished to a mixture of the 

 Euskarian with the Celtic element. This fact appears to me 

 probable in respect to the Island of Brehat, and incontestable in the 

 case of Granville. The women of this seaport bear the closest 

 resemblance to the Basques both by their general physiognomy and 

 by the beauty and special character of the face, but more especially 

 by the graceful curve of the outline from the head to the bottom of 

 the shoulders ; and this last point of resemblance seems to be 

 singularly characteristic. M. Vivien de Saint-Martin has made 

 analogous observations on the fishing population of Boulogne, and 

 he thinks even that the ethnological element of black hair which 

 has mixed with the Celtic element of a light complexion at various 

 points of the western shores of Europe, may be referable to an 

 intermixture of the Basque type, and he thus approximates to the 

 opinion of William Edwards, who characterised the inhabitants of 

 certain districts in Brittany as Celto-Iberian. 



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