Of all their dexterity they had need when strange men with black curling beards and dark stern faces--men that they had never seen--came sailing into their harbours and tempted them down from their perches with a display of bright rare stuffs and gewgaws. Poor simple white savages, it is likely enough that they had thought themselves till then the only men in the world. Then came the attempts of the Phœnicians to enslave and to subdue them, and wildly the islanders fought for their freedom, knowing as little as the creatures of the jungle do of the forces arrayed against them. The wild birds were netted at last. In the sixth century before Christ, the Carthaginians were masters of the archipelago, and dragged the slingers off to serve in their armies. Mago, a Punic leader, gave his name to Puerto Mahon. Then came a time when the natives felt the grasp of the Semites relax. Their power had been crushed by the Romans and the islands enjoyed a brief interval of liberty. But in the year 123 _B.C._, the conquerors of Carthage remembered their neglected heritage, and sent Cecilius Metellas to take possession. He founded the cities of Palma and Pollensa, which still retain their Latin names, and brought with him some thousands of Italian and Spanish colonists, who soon tamed the wildness of the aborigines. Thence onward for centuries the archipelago prospered quietly, safe beneath the outspread wings of the Roman eagle. Upon the break-up of the empire it passed through various hands to the Visigoths, to be wrested from them in the eighth century by the Arabs. Under this new dominion the islands became a nest of pirates, who ultimately founded a kingdom embracing parts of the Spanish mainland and of Sardinia. The depredations of the Balearic Moors excited the anger of Christendom, and Pope Pascual II. preached a crusade against them. Constituting themselves the ministers of Europe’s vengeance, the Pisans and Catalans inflicted a severe punishment on the Pirates and sacked the rich city of Palma. Over a hundred years later, in 1227, Don Jaime I. of Aragon reduced the whole group of islands in a memorable campaign, and annexed them finally to Christendom. The conqueror constituted his new possessions into a kingdom for his second son and namesake, from whose grandson, Jaime II., they were taken by Pedro IV. in the year 1347 and incorporated with the kingdom of Aragon.