The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-08-20
HAVE NEVER BEEN CONQUERED.
The Heroic Basques and Their Many Dek-
perate Wars with Invaders.

The Heroic Basques and Their Many Dek-
perate Wars with Invaders.
But these people of Spain, and yet
not Spaniards, who are they? Models of
ancient manners, untainted by time. SO
marked, so separates distinct in.
racial characteristics from their near
est neighbors as from the most remote
so rooted to this soil, how shall we
account for them? Velasco, their own
historian gravely y:traces their descent di-
rectly from Tuba1-Cain, says the Cosmo-
politan- Humboldt calls them Celt-Ibe-
rians. Theory on theory, each one dis
proving the last with equal learning,
has been advanced to account for this
phenomenon. Nothing now seems
more probable than that they are
remnant of the troglodytes of the age
of stone, the same with the men whose
bones are found in the cayerns of the
Alps and Pyrenees, beside those of the
case their unwritten history dates from
twenty centuries before the Christian
era.
There are confused Basque traditions
of the coming of the Phonicians to
their fountains, and the earliest Ro-
man writers have painted in glowing
colors the noble bearing, patriarchal
customs and wise old laws the Phuni-
clans found there. They discovered the
gold and silver mines and vanished
away in their great star-guided ships
Wars and dissensions followed; then
silence again till Cesar came. His
lieutenant Crassus reduced Spain to a
Roman province, but Caesar says: "A
few petty people higher up in The
mountains did not make their subInis-
sion and sent hostages" Roman
poets expand the picture and describe
the Iberians, as they named the
Basques, as objects of terror to all the
world, whom neither hunger, heat nor
cold could conquer, who only gloried
in labors and perils.
Pushed by the Romans, they retreat
ed to their fortified towns; pressed by
siege, they withdrew to the highest
rocks, watched the confaglation of the
towns, and threw themselves, shouting.
from the craigs, to be dashed in pieces
rather than surrender. Mothers
drowned their sons rather than have
them become slaves. The story of their
steady resistance is nearly incredible.
Taken prisoners, they preferred cruci-
f2ion to subsection, and died singing Il
paean of joy. Again and again. after
thinking them conquered, the Roman
projects encountered fresh outbreaks.
till at last the Caesars were wise enough
to abandon the effort and secure them
as allies.
AS allies, the Basques proved, from
the first, as faithful as they had before
been stubborn. More than once their
unconquerable courage turned the for
tune of battles. They went to Sicily
with Hannibal, leaving traces OF them
selves in Italy, in names of towns such
as Urbino and Orvieto. Later they
joined steadily for two centuries in the
strife against the Visigoths At
Rencesvalles, in rs, the Franks touched
them, and the flash that followed still
lights the pass and the cliffs, though
ten centuries have passed since false
Gane1on betrayed Roland and the furi-
Gus Basques fell on Gharlemagne's rear
guard and crushed them with rocks in
the defile of bones between ngatson
and A1tabisoar