BILBAO. (Basque Ptizcz&a. 'under the hill' . A seaport town of Spain. capital of the Province of Vizcaya. situated in a n ourtain gorge on the Nervi6n. about s miles from its month at Pertugalete Map: Spain. D 1 . Bil bao is well built, the Principal are straight, and the house- substantial. Five bri Iges, one a stone bridge of the Fourteenth Century, cross the river which divides the old town from the new. There are several fine pub lic walks. numerous fountains. but no yliblie buil lings of any note. The city is purely com mercial. It 1ms many extensive rope-works. and manufacture-' of hardware, leather, bats. tobacco, and earthenware. There are also (locks for building merchant vessels, and in the vicin ity are iron and copper mines. The NerviOn has been deepened so as to be navigable by vessels drawing twenty-two feet, and at pres ent Bilbao is one of the most important trading ports of 'Spain. The imports consist chiefly of cotton and woolen manufactures, colonial pro duce, fish, jute, spirits, hardware, machinery.
railway materials, etc.: and the exports consist of wool, iron, fruits, oil. flour and grains, wines, madder, minerals. liquorice, etc. The women here do almost all the heavy porterage. Bilbao awes its present prosperity to the iron-mines which stand on the left bank of the NerdOn. Their valuable deposits were known to exist from the earliest times. but the mines have only been worked within the last decades of the Nineteenth Century. Bilbao was founded in the year 1300 by Diego Lopez de Ilaro, under the name of 11elvao, i.e. the fine fort,' and, being well situated and little disturbed by the civil wars of Spain, it soon attained great prosperity. In the Fifteenth Century it was the seat of the most authoritative commercial tribunal in Spain. It suffered severely in the wars with France. first in 1795. and again in 1808, when 1•00 of its inhabitants were slaughtered in cold blood. Population. in 181)7, 74,100.