"This old Iberian, world-conquering race came to its sunset hour a
thousand years ago, and the gloaming after their sunset is deepening
into that gloom which hides all. Only a remnant, a hint of the
old-time radiance, remains up to this day.
"In Southern Europe, the remnant of this antique race, the fragment of
a root with the old-time vigorous sap in it, may still be found.
There, on the Spanish peninsula where its cradle was rocked, the grave
of a once powerful race is being slowly sodded; for there still live
that strange people called the Basques. It matters not today what they
are--chiefly mountaineers, I think--but they are of the old Iberian
stock, and the Iberians were colonists from some unknown land,
pre-historic, undiscoverable by us. Colonists and colonizers also.
From some unknown land, hidden from us in the gloom of ages, these
Iberians came to Southern Europe in ships. To Sicily they went in
ships; to Britain and Ireland; to Norway also, and where else, or how
far or for what, is left to conjecture. But being strong in numbers,
ambitious to conquer, skilled in navigation, we can well believe that
they pushed their flag and commerce nigh to the ends of the world.
"Now these Basques, to-day mountaineers, they tell me, were once, nor
long ago, great sailors. In instinct and habit, they were true to the
old Iberian stock, to which they were as the last green leaf on a
dying tree. They were of a world-conquering race, and they sailed the
seas of the world, seeking profit fearlessly. Four hundred years ago
Jacques Cartier, himself a Breton, with the old Basque or Iberian
blood warm in him--for the Bretons were of the old Iberian stock, with
the same temper and look of face--sailed into the gulf of the St.
Lawrence, and found--what?