als of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in verse, for which they claim an antiquity of six thousand years." (Strabo, lib. iii., p. 139.)
The Iberians are represented to-day by the Basques.
The Basques are "of middle size, compactly built, robust and agile, of a darker complexion than the Spaniards, with gray eyes and black hair. They are simple but proud, impetuous, merry, and hospitable. The women are beautiful, skilful in performing men's work, and remarkable for their vivacity and grace. The Basques are much attached to dancing, and are very fond of the music of the bagpipe." ("New American Cyclopædia," art. Basques.)
"According to Paul Broca their language stands quite alone, or has mere analogies with the American type. Of all Europeans, we must provisionally hold the Basques to be the oldest inhabitants of our quarter of the world." (Peschel, "Races of Men," p. 501.)
The Basque language—the Euscara—"has some common traits with the Magyar, Osmanli, and other dialects of the Altai family, as, for instance, with the Finnic on the old continent, as well as the Algonquin-Lenape language and some others in America." ("New American Cyclopædia," art. Basques.)
Duponceau says of the Basque tongue:
"This language, preserved in a corner of Europe by a few thousand mountaineers, is the sole remaining fragment of, perhaps, a hundred dialects constructed on the same plan, which probably existed and were universally spoken at a remote period in that quarter of the world. Like the bones of the mammoth, it remains a monument of the destruction produced by a succession of ages. It stands single and alone of its kind, surrounded by idioms that have no affinity with it."
We have seen them settling, in the earliest ages, in Ireland. They also formed the base of the dark-haired population of England and Scotland. They seem to have race affinities with the Berbers, on the Mediterranean coast of Africa.
