in Ancient Geography, a district of Tarraconensis; on the Oceanus Cantabricus, or Bay of Biscay; now Biscay. The inhabitants were famous for their warlike character. Dr Wallis seems to make the Cantabrian the ancient language of Spain; and it, according to him, like the Gaulish, gave way to a kind of broken Latin called romance or romana, which by degrees was refined into the Castilian or present Spanish. But we can hardly suppose that so large a country, inhabited by such a variety of people, all spoke the same language. The ancient Cantabrian, in effect, is still found to subsist in the more barren and mountainous parts of the provinces of Biscay, Asturias, and Navarre, as far as Bayonne, much as the British does in Wales; but the people only talk it, while in writing they use either the Spanish or French, as they happen to live under the one or the other nation. Some attribute this to a jealousy of foreigners learning the mysteries of their language, others to a poverty of words and expressions. The Cantabrian does not appear to have any marked affinity with other languages, except that some Spanish words have been adopted in it to express things the use of which the Biscayans were anciently unacquainted with. Its pronunciation is not disagreeable.