the following divisions, clans, or tribes.

1. The Gheghides, containing—

a. The proper Gheghides, the most northern of the Skipetar, conterminous with the Slavonic countries of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovna, bounded on the south by the river Drin—

b. The Mirdites, south of the Drin, in the province of Croia, who like the Gheghides, are Christians.

The Gheghides, as a class, are dark-skinned and black-eyed.

2. The Toskides of Toskuria, or the country between Croia and the Vojutza, the least mountainous part of Albania and containing the valleys of the Sternatza and the Beratina, are more light than dark, with blue or grey eyes.

3. The Liapides of Liapuria, or the valley and water-shed of the Deropuli and the parts about Delvinaki, are the worst-looking and most demoralized of the Skipetar. Such at least is their character.

4. The Dzhami of Dzhamuria are the most agricultural. They extend from the Liapides on the north, to the Greek frontier southward, Parga and Suli being two of their towns.

The purity of the Albanian blood is considerable; and I believe that, as the Skipetar were once spread far wider in every direction than they are to be found at present,[2] and as their frontier has receded, the amount of Albanian blood beyond Albania is very great, whereas the foreign blood within Albania itself is but slight. The dark complexions of the Gheghides may, or may not, be referable to Slavonic intermixture. The lighter skins of the Toskides may, or may not, indicate purity. It is worth remarking, however, that the fair complexion is found in the parts most removed from the frontier, as well as in the parts where the intermixture (such as it is) has been the least.

The Taulantii and Parthini are the populations of antiquity, whose localities coincide with that of the Toskides. The colonies of Epidamnus and Apollonia suggest the notion of Greek, the Via Egnatia of Roman intermixture.

The Liapides are in the country of the Orestæ and Atintanes, the Gheghs in that of the Encheleæ, the Mirdites in that of the Pirustæ. In the northern part of their area was the colony of Epidaurus, and the Dalmatian frontier.

Hitherto the opportunities of intermixture have been but slight. With that part, however, of Albania which coincides with the ancient Epirus, rather than with Southern Illyria the case is different.

In the time of Pyrrhus it was Hellenized, and at the very earliest dawn of history its population was modified still more considerably. By whom? By the inhabitants of the opposite coast of Italy, whoever they were.

This is as much as is necessary to say about the Skipetar of Albania at present. They are the descendants of the Southern Illyrians and the ancient Epirots—Chaonians, Thesprotians, Molossians, &c. They are pure in blood, as compared with nine-tenths of the rest of Europe; but still more or less mixed, the chief foreign elements being ancient Italian, Greek, and Roman.

CHAPTER II.

THE western extremity of the Pyrenees, where France and Spain join, gives us a locality rendered famous by the historical events of San Sebastian, and the legends of Fuenterabia, with the provinces of Bearn and Gascony on the French, and Navarre and Biscay on the Spanish, side of the mountains. Here it is where, although the towns, like Bayonne, Pampeluna, and Bilbao, are French or Spanish, the country people are Basques or Biscayans—Basques or Biscayans not only in the provinces of Biscay, but in Alava, Upper Navarre, and the French districts of Labourd and Soule. Their name is Spanish (the word having originated in that of the ancient Vascones), and it is not the one by which they designate themselves; though, possibly, it is indirectly connected with it. The native name is derived from the root Eusk-; which becomes Eusk-ara when the language, Eusk-kerria when the country, and Eusk-aldunac when the people are spoken of; so that the Basque language of the Biscayans of Biscay is, in the vernacular tongue, the Euskara of the Euskaldunac of Euskerria.

It is not for nothing that this difference of form has been indicated. In the classical writers we find more than one of the old Spanish populations mentioned under different derivatives from the same root, and sometimes a doubt is expressed by the writer in whose pages it occurs, as to whether there were two separate populations, or only one denoted by two synonymous names. Thus, side by side with the Bast-uli, we find the Bast-itani, and, side by side with the Turd-uli, the Turd-etani. Now respecting these last, Strabo expressly says that whether they were different populations under the same name, or the same under different ones is uncertain.

That the Euskara is no new tongue may be inferred from the fact of its falling into dialects; which Humboldt limits to three, whilst others extend them to five or six.

a. The Biscayan proper is spoken in the country of the ancient Autrigones and Caristii, and it has been proposed to call it the Autrigonian. It has, less correctly, been called Cantabrian, and this is the name which the national taste best likes; for a descent from the indomitable Cantabrian that so long and so successfully spurned the yoke of Rome, and who transmitted the same spirit and the same independence to the Asturian, is creditable enough to be claimed. Nor is the claim unfounded; since, in all probability, the ancient Cantabria included some of the ancestors of the Euskaldunac.

b. The Guipuscoan is the western Biscayan.

c. The Laburtanian is the Euskarian of France, spoken in the parts about St. Jean de Luz; and which, in the district of Soule, is supposed to fall into a sub-dialect.

The Euskarian language has always been the standing point to those inquirers who have argued backwards, from the existing state of things, towards the reconstruction of the ethnology and philology of antiquity; first and foremost of whom, both in date and importance, is Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose essays on the subject form two of the most classical monographs in comparative philology. The method he employed was much more of a novelty then than now. We may guess what it was beforehand. It was the analysis of local names. In this he was successful. Roots like ast-, ur-, and others, found in the ancient names of Spanish and Portuguese localities, far beyond the present pale of the Euskarian tongue, he referred to the Basque, and found them significant therein; thus uria=town or city, and ast=rock or mountain—whereby Asturias means the mountainous country, and Astures the mountaineers.

His inference was (as might be expected) that the Euskarian was as little a modern and local tongue as the Welsh; indeed, that it was so far from anything of the kind, as to be one of the oldest in Europe, and not only old, but widely-spread also. The whole of the peninsula, France as far as the Garonne and the Rhone, and even portions of Italy, were, according to Humboldt, originally Basque; or, as it is more conveniently called, Iberic or Iberian,