No other French town contains 75,000 souls. Paris is both the political capital and the chief manufacturing town of France; and here a vast accumulation of population has taken place. But elsewhere the people are much more uniformly scattered in France than in England. The soil is generally fertile, and there are not seen great manufacturing and mining centres as in England.

FRANCE (Abstract).

BAYS. Biscay, English Channel, Gulf of Lyons.

ISLAND. Corsica.

CAPES. Finisterre, La Hogue.

ESTUARIES. Gironde, Seine.

RIVERS. Loire, Seine, Rhone, Garonne.

MOUNTAINS. Alps, Pyrenees, Jura, Vosges, Puys of Auvergne.

DIVISIONS. Normandy, Brittany, Champagne, Burgundy, Guienne, Provence, &c.

TOWNS (with their populations): Paris, 1,800,000; Lyons 325,000; Marseilles, 300,000; Bordeaux, 200,000; Lille, 150,000; Toulouse, 125,000.

COLONIES. In Asia: Pondicherry, Cochin China.

In Africa Algeria, Senegambia, Bourbon.

In America: Cayenne, and several of the smaller West Indian Islands.

Sect. VI. SPAIN.

160. EXTENT. Spain is three times as large as England and Wales, but her population is only two-thirds as great.

161. BOUNDARIES. Spain is bounded by the Mediterranean on the South and East; by the Pyrenees and Bay of Biscay on the North. On the West, for a short space, both in the north and south, the Atlantic is the boundary; but the political line between Spain and Portugal is arbitrary, cutting across the watersheds and rivers at right angles regardless of geography.

162. ATTACHED ISLANDS. The Balearic group, comprising Majorca, Minorca, and smaller islands. Also the Canaries form an integral part of Spain (as Wight of England, Corsica of France), of which the largest are Great Canary and Teneriffe.

163. CAPES. Finisterre, to be carefully distinguished from the French Finisterre, the same word with the Land's End: Trafalgar, near the Straits of Gibraltar.

164. CLIMATE. The south coast of Spain, next the Mediterranean is warm enough to produce rice and oranges; the date-palm, sugar-cane, and the American aloe thrive. Here irrigation is necessary, the summer heats lasting long without rain. In the high central plateau of the country about Madrid the climate is bitter in winter, scorching and dusty in summer.

The Western boundary towards Portugal is moister, and Galicia possesses one of the pleasantest climates in Spain. It has been supposed that the uncertain rainfall of Spain has been aggravated by the manner in which the Spaniards have cleared the trees from the mountain ranges. There is nothing in the bare soil to hold the water; the rivers are nearly dried up in summer, while they are liable to become torrents in winter.

165. MOUNTAINS AND PLATEAUS. The Pyrenees are the highest mountains in Spain, attaining 11,168 feet in height. The range is continued westward to Galicia and Cape Finisterre, forming the watershed which divides the drainage of Spain that falls into the Bay of Biscay from the rest of the country. This narrow northern strip is called the Asturias provinces, and the mountains are called the Asturias range.

Let us next draw the line of watershed which separates the waters that flow into the Mediterranean from those that flow westward to the Atlantic. It will start from the Asturias range north of Burgos, and, speaking very roughly, will pass southwards near the meridian of 2° west longitude. This watershed will be the eastern wall of the great tableland of Spain. The ground falls rapidly on its eastern side;

but on the western much more gradually; and on this plateau lie the provinces of Old and New Castile, with an average height of near 2,000 feet above the sea.

This plateau is the most striking instance of a high tableland in Europe. The Sierra Morena forms its southern wall.

The Sierra Nevada in Granada is a lofty but isolated range.

166. RIVERS. (1) The Ebro, the principal river of the Mediterranean drainage.

(2) The Douro (the lower course of which is in Portugal) which drains Old Castile, the northern half of the great plateau.

(3) The Tagus and Guadiana (also both partly in Portugal lower down), which drain New Castile, the southern half of the great plateau.

(4) The Guadalquiver, which drains similarly to the west a lower step as it were of the same plateau.

167. COMMUNICATIONS. Spain is behind all the countries of Europe, except Turkey, in railways as well as in other matters. Her railways can be rapidly enumerated :

(1) From Bayonne (in France) round the western end of the Pyrenees to St. Sebastian, Vittoria, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca, Madrid.

(2) A line branching from this near Burgos passes down the Ebro valley, by Saragossa to Tarragona and Barcelona. The direct route from Barcelona into France round the eastern end of the Pyrenees is not yet completed.

(3) Tarragona to Valencia and Madrid.

(4) Madrid to Cordova, Seville, Cadiz, with a branch from Cordova to Malaga and Granada.

168. RACES OF MEN. The Iberian Peninsula (as the Romans called Spain and Portugal) was in their time peopled by a tribe of Kelts known as the Iberian Kelts. These were largely Latinized during the long Roman rule.

In the fifth century, when the Roman empire was overrun, the Visigoths, a division of the Goths, a Teutonic tribe, established themselves in Spain; and a Gothic kingdom

lasted 250 years. In A.D. 710, the Mahometans invaded Spain from Africa, overran it, and drove the Christian inhabitants (Kelts, Latins, Teutons) into the Asturias districts. The Caliph at Cordova then ruled over the rest of Spain. But the Christians soon began to press back upon the Moors, and by A.D. 1238 had recovered all Spain except the kingdom of Granada, which was not recovered till A.D. 1492.

The inhabitants of Spain are thus a very mixed race: the Iberian Keltish element prevails in the west; the Gothic Teutonic in the north; the Moorish has left its traces especially in the south; while the Latin influence has prevailed in language so greatly that it is usual to class the Spanish as one of the Latin races. Probably, so far as race is concerned, the Iberian is the prevailing element still; mixed considerably with Teutonic blood, and overlaid by Latin civilization.

The Spaniards proper are thus Aryan or Indo-Germanic by race; but the Basques, a people who are found from the small province of Biscay on the north coast to the Pyrenees, are supposed to be non-Aryan, the relics of the people who inhabited Europe before the Aryans came. Their language, at all events, has no affinity with English, French, Spanish, or any Aryan tongue.

169. HISTORIC SKETCH. In the days when the Moors ruled more than two-thirds of Spain, the Christians near the northern mountains were divided into several small monarchies, of which Aragon and Castile were the chief. Just at the time that the Moors were expelled from Spain (at the end of the fifteenth century) these crowns were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, so that Ferdinand of Aragon became monarch of the whole of Spain.

Spain then discovered America, where she spread her colonies; and the King of Spain becoming Emperor of Germany, became also the most powerful monarch in Europe. From A.D. 1600, however, the power of Spain has steadily declined down to the present time. In A.D. 1807, Buonaparte seized Spain, but he was overthrown in A. D. 1814, and

G

the old King came back. He ruled absolutely, as all before him, but there were revolts against his authority. Spain about this time lost her American possessions. Since A.D. 1833, when Queen Isabella ascended the throne, Spain has been torn by revolutions, chiefly military, and has changed her government twice in form to a Republic; has changed it really many times.

170. PRESENT CONSTITUTION. The outcome is that Alphonso XVI. (the son of Queen Isabella) reigns as a constitutional sovereign. The constitution is modelled on that of England; the King rules through Ministers, who are responsible to the Cortes (ie. Parliament), and can only retain power so long as they can command a majority of votes in the Cortes.

Spain is the most backward country in Europe now; and has moreover been insolvent since A.D. 1851.

171. RELIGION. The Catholic religion has always been the established religion of Spain: and from A.D. 1500 to the present century the Inquisition was maintained in Spain, and no other religion was tolerated. Under the present constitution all religions are tolerated, and a great quantity of the Church property has been confiscated of late years. But the religion of nearly the whole people is Roman Catholic.

172. LANGUAGE. The Spanish language has been much more affected by the Roman rule even than the people it is essentially a Latin language, though containing many Gothic and Moorish words, and is classed with Italian as a language descended from the ancient Latin.

173. ANIMALS. The bear, the chamois, the common lynx, and the ibex are still found in the Pyrenees; the wild boar and the wolf throughout the country; the pard, i.e. the pardine lynx, in many places. The Barbary ape is established on the rock of Gibraltar.

Of domesticated animals the merino sheep is celebrated for its wool.

174. PLANTS. The Spanish chestnut, the cork oak, the olive, and the orange, are trees of Spain. On the southern coast rice is extensively cultivated. The vine is cultivated