in stays, and very peculiar, allowed of its navigating trimly in the close bays of Asturias (which are little more than enclosed basins, as Pasages, for instance), and also freely out at sea.  It could sail round a lake, and sail round the world—­a strange craft with two objects, good for a pond and good for a storm.  The hooker is among vessels what the wagtail is among birds—­one of the smallest and one of the boldest.  The wagtail perching on a reed scarcely bends it, and, flying away, crosses the ocean.

These Biscay hookers, even to the poorest, were gilt and painted.  Tattooing is part of the genius of those charming people, savages to some degree.  The sublime colouring of their mountains, variegated by snows and meadows, reveals to them the rugged spell which ornament possesses in itself.  They are poverty-stricken and magnificent; they put coats-of-arms on their cottages; they have huge asses, which they bedizen with bells, and huge oxen, on which they put head-dresses of feathers.  Their coaches, which you can hear grinding the wheels two leagues off, are illuminated, carved, and hung with ribbons.  A cobbler has a bas-relief on his door:  it is only St. Crispin and an old shoe, but it is in stone.  They trim their leathern jackets with lace.  They do not mend their rags, but they embroider them.  Vivacity profound and superb!  The Basques are, like the Greeks, children of the sun; while the Valencian drapes himself, bare and sad, in his russet woollen rug, with a hole to pass his head through, the natives of Galicia and Biscay have the delight of fine linen shirts, bleached in the dew.  Their thresholds and their windows teem with faces fair and fresh, laughing under garlands of maize; a joyous and proud serenity shines out in their ingenious arts, in their trades, in their customs, in the dress of their maidens, in their songs.  The mountain, that colossal ruin, is all aglow in Biscay:  the sun’s rays go in and out of every break.  The wild Jaizquivel is full of idylls.  Biscay is Pyrenean grace as Savoy is Alpine grace.  The dangerous bays—­the neighbours of St. Sebastian, Leso, and Fontarabia—­with storms, with clouds, with spray flying over the capes, with the rages of the waves and the winds, with terror, with uproar, mingle boat-women crowned with roses.  He who has seen the Basque country wishes to see it again.  It is the blessed land.  Two harvests a year; villages resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all Sunday the sound of guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making; houses clean and bright; storks in the belfries.

Let us return to Portland—­that rugged mountain in the sea.

The peninsula of Portland, looked at geometrically, presents the appearance of a bird’s head, of which the bill is turned towards the ocean, the back of the head towards Weymouth; the isthmus is its neck.