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Show LITTLE NATION OF ANDORRA Republic Is a Veritable Rip Van Win-kle Win-kle Land Hidden High Among the Pyrenees. Paris, Fi ance. There is nothing else In the world quite like the little "protected "pro-tected republic" of Andorra, a veritable verita-ble Rip Van Winkle laud, hardly yet stirring from its thousand years' slum-ber, slum-ber, and in its dreams It still hears schoing the march of the valiant paladins pala-dins of Charlemagne, by whose help it came into being. But it is likely to waken soon and be made to realize that it, too, belongs to the 20th century. cen-tury. For a railroad is being built across the Pyrenees just east of Andorra, An-dorra, and then will be sure to come a wagon road the valley can be en-tered en-tered now only by a bridle path from the railroad Into Its midst. Perched up among the Pyrenees, od the border between France and. Spain and on the ridge of the watershed be- mmmimmm Old Stronghold in Andorra. tween the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Mediter-ranean, the flag of this proud little nation na-tion flutters over a region that is almost al-most as much the land of the free and nuite as much the home of the brave as is that of the Stars and Stripes, although al-though it includes but 175 square miles and contains a population of only 6,000 souls. For over 700 years Andorra has thrived under a modified double protectorate, pro-tectorate, the rule of France on the north and of the Bishop of Ungel on the south. A representative of each lives in the valley, administers justice and receives a small biennial tribute. Otherwise Andorra is an independent and self-governing state. Its relations to these two "over-lords" are a quaint survival of medieval feudalism. |