BAS QUES

a race of people inhabiting region at W. end of Pyrenees, including part of department of Ba es-Pyrénées in France, and provinces of Biscaya, Guipuzcoa, and Alava, and part of} Navarre in Spain. They retained practical independence in Spain until 1876, in France until time of Revolution. They are of good height and excellent physique, fair-skinned, and dark or fair-haired; are brave, intelligent, hardbie extremely religious, and characterised by great pride of birth; have long been famous as seamen and whalers. Many ethnologists hold they are descended from Iberians, the earliest known inhabitants of the peninsula; while their language, Escuara or is polysynthetic and is related to no other tongue known to _philologists, whose researches have so far yielded no definite results. Grammars have been compiled by Van Eys, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, and others, and the language is said to have eight dialects. Lit. is modern and comparatively unimportant, consisting chiefly of torical and religious plays, proverbs, and songs.