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 BASQUES BASS 367 year for deliberation upon matters of general interest. Their rights are protected by the fucroa, or written constitutions, which were granted by ancient Spanish kings. In religion they are Koman Catholics. Whatever may have been the origin and ethnological relations of the Basque people, they have enjoyed an immemorial reputation for valor in their pres- ent seats. They were the Oantabri of the Romans, and are alluded to by Horace as a people hard to be taught to bear the yoke. The Spanish Basques long maintained them- selves independent, though situated between the rival monarchies of Navarre and Castile ; and though in the 13th century they were in- corporated into the Castilian monarchy, they retained their old liberties, paid no taxes, and enjoyed throughout Spain all the exemptions of the nobility. The Spanish constitution of 1812 stripped them of their long-possessed privileges, which however they recovered in 1823, after an energetic insurrection. When, after the death of Ferdinand VII. in 1833, Isabella determined to take their privileges from them again, they embraced with ardor the cause of Don Carlos, and after six years of rebellion recognized the young queen only when the reestablishment of the fueros was promised them. The proper name of the Basque language is Euscara or Esquera, which degenerated into Vase, Bascongada, and in the French provinces into Bascuence. Eusk or Esc probably signifies sunrise or east, point- ing to the original country of the Basques. The people call themselves Euscaldunac, peo- ple of the language, designating all strangers as Erdaldunac, people of foreign language. Some natives derive the name of Bascon from basocoa, forest-dweller. There are three principal dia- lects of this language: the Guipuzcoan, the purest, pleasantest, and most developed of all, spoken in Guipuzcoa and Alava ; the Vizcayan ; and the Labortan of Lower Navarre, Labourd, and Zuberoa, which is softer than the Viz- cayan. Great diversity of opinion exists among writers on everything concerning not only the history but the language of this brave, hardy, industrious, freedom-loving people. It is, how- ever, certain that the Euscara entirely differs from thelanguages of the Indo-European family. It has some common traits with the Magyar, Osmanli, and other dialects of the Uralo- Altaic family. This similarity consists in blending several words into one, especially in the con- jugation of verbs, and in the exclusion of com- binations like cr, gr, pr, pi, tr, &c. But there are few coincidences of the roots of words. The Euscara is the primitive language of the inhabitants of Spain, who were called Iberi by the classic writers, were settled in the whole peninsula, in a part of Aquitania, partly in Sici- ly, Sardinia, and Corsica, and traces of whom are found in Italy and in Thrace. By an invasion of a branch of Celts, in prehistoric times, these aborigines were mixed in a part of the pen- insula with the invaders, thus producing the 76 VOL. ii. 24 Celtiberi, who included the Cantabri. Many writers confound the latter with the aborigi- nal Basques; but the inhabitants of Iberia at the time of the Roman invasion were of three sorts : the Iberi, the Celtic!, and the Celtiberi, to whom the Cantabri belonged. The settle- ments of Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthagini- ans on the coasts of the Mediterranean sea are of much later date. The Euscara has no words beginning with r, f, tt ; it has more sibilants than the Greek, viz., s, z, hard and soft ts ; it is very rich in words and grammatic forms ; it is full and well-sounding, and very perspicuous. Its predominant combinations of sounds are: ar, man; bae, be, low, deep; cal, damage ; car, gar, high ; maen, men, power ; na, plain, high ; 0, high ; se, ce, plain, &c. Very rare combinations are ner, and tar, ter. We possess the most valuable grammatical in- formation in the Vizcayan, the best lexical de- velopment in the Guipuzcoan (Larramendi's Diccionario trilingue, Castellano, Bascuence, y Latin, San Sebastian, 1853), but scarcely anything available in the Labortan dialect. William von Humboldt (in Adelung's Mithri- dates, and in his work on the aborigines of Spain, &c., Berlin, 1821), Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, and Chaho (Dictionnaire basque, Paris, 1857 et seq.) furnish the best materials among all foreign writers on the Basque lan- guage. See also Ticknor's " Spanish Litera- ture," vol. iii., and Le pays basque, sa popula- tion, sa langue, ses mceurs, sa litterature et sa musique, by Francisque Michel (Paris, 1857), who has also published a Romancero du pays basque (Paris, 1859). HAS-lllllX, a former department of France, now included in the German imperial terri- tory of Alsace-Lorraine. (See ALSAOB-LOE- EAINE.) BASS (labrax), a family of sea and fresh-water fishes of which there are many well known varieties in American waters. They belong to the division acanthopterygii, or those having spinous fins, to the family of the percidm, or those of the perch type, and have several sub- genera, as grystes and centrarchus, which are the most remarkable. Bass of various kinds are found in most of the waters of the world, and are everywhere well esteemed, both as a table fish and by the angler. The principal European variety is the labrax lupus, which European Bass (Labrax lupus). has by some writers been confounded with our striped bass, an entirely different fish, first dis- tinguished by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill of New York. The following are the American varie-