These early Phenician settlements were planted thus in the territory now known as the kingdom of Tunis and the western portion of the French province of Constantine. From thence to the Pillars of Hêraklês (strait of Gibraltar), we do not hear of any others; but the colony of Gadês, outside of the strait, formed the centre of a flourishing and extensive commerce, which reached on one side far to the south, not less than thirty days’ sail along the western coast of Africa,[520]—and on the other side to Britain and the Scilly Islands. There were numerous Phenician factories and small trading-towns along the western coast of what is now the empire of Morocco; and the island of Kernê, twelve days’ sail along the coast from the strait of Gibraltar, formed an established dépôt for Phenician merchandise in trading with the interior. There were, moreover, towns not far distant from the coast, of Libyans or Ethiopians, to which the inhabitants of the central regions resorted, and where they brought their leopard skins and elephants’ teeth, to be exchanged against the unguents of Tyre and the pottery of Athens.[521] So distant a trade, with the limited navigation of that day, could not be made to embrace very bulky goods. [520] Strabo, xvii, pp. 825-826. He found it stated by some authors that there had once been three hundred trading establishments along this coast, reaching thirty days’ voyage southward from Tingis or Lixus (Tangier); but that they had been chiefly ruined by the tribes of the interior,—the Pharusians and Nigritæ. He suspects the statement of being exaggerated, but there seems nothing at all incredible in it. From Strabo’s language we gather that Eratosthenês set forth the statement as in his judgment a true one. [521] Compare Skylax, c. 111, and the Periplus of Hanno, ap. Hudson, Geogr. Græc. Min. vol. i, pp. 1-6. I have already observed that the τάριχος (salt provisions) from Gadeira was currently sold in the markets of Athens, from the Peloponnesian war downward.—Eupolis, Fragm. 23; Μαρικᾶς, p. 506, ed. Meineke, Comic. Græc. Πότερ᾽ ἦν τὸ τάριχος; Φρύγιον ἢ Γαδειρικόν; Compare the citations from the other comic writers, Antiphanês and Nikostratus ap. Athenæ. iii, p. 118. The Phenician merchants bought in exchange Attic pottery for their African trade.