Page:Impressions of Spain in 1866.djvu/16

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and her children, with a doctor and two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of ominous warnings of revohitions, and grim stories of brigands, for that comparatively unvi- sited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebas- tian the journey was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The express train dashed them past houses and villages, and pic- turesque old towns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and so on past the awftil frontier, the scene of so many passages-at-arms between ofl&cials and ladies' maids, till they found themselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town of St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy waves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated little Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the prefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction lodging- houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens' heroes would call ^ the most sea- bathingest place ' that ever was ! But at present it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaf- folding ; and the one straight street leading from the hotel to the Church of S. Maria, with the castle above, are almost all that remains of the