HOW THE ARMY MADE THE PASSAGE OF RONCESVALLES.

The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid¹ and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries², the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay. South of the Adour the jagged line of mountains which fringe the sky-line send out long granite³ claws, running down into the lowlands and dividing them into “gaves” or stretches of valley. Hillocks grow into hills, and hills into mountains, each range overlying its neighbor, until they soar up in the giant chain which raises its spotless and untrodden peaks, white and dazzling, against the pale blue wintry sky.

A quiet land is this—a land where the slow-moving Basque, with his flat biretta-cap, his red sash and his hempen⁴ sandals, tills his scanty⁵ farm or drives his lean flock to their hill-side pastures. It is the country of the wolf and the isard, of the brown bear and the mountain-goat, a land of bare rock and of rushing water. Yet here it was that the will of a great prince had now assembled a gallant⁶ army; so that from the Adour to the passes of Navarre the barren valleys and wind-swept wastes were populous⁷ with soldiers and loud with the shouting of orders and the neighing of horses. For the banners of war had been flung to the wind once more, and over those glistening⁸ peaks was the highway along which Honor pointed⁹ in an age when men had chosen her as their guide.

And now all was ready for the enterprise. From Dax to St. Jean Pied-du-Port the country was mottled with the white tents of Gascons, Aquitanians and English, all eager for the advance. From all sides the free companions had trooped in, until not less than twelve thousand of these veteran troops were cantoned along the frontiers of Navarre. From England had arrived the prince's brother, the Duke of Lancaster, with four hundred

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