We know from ancient records that when the Carthaginians, those indefatigable sea-traders, first planted their trading-posts and colonies along this coast, they were opposed by savage and inhospitable tribesmen, some of whom dwelt in caves; but the dolmens discovered on Cape Spartel and the curious megalithic monuments at M’zorah point to a still earlier race—the men of the Stone Age, perhaps. At the beginning of the Christian era, and for some centuries thereafter, the country which we know as Morocco was the Roman province of Mauretania, its northern portion crisscrossed by Roman roads and dotted with Roman cities, the most important of which, perhaps, was Volubilis, the ruins of which, not far from Mequinez, are now in process of excavation. In the fifth century Mauretania became subject to the Vandals, and in the seventh to the Goths, both of whom, judging by the scarcity of Roman remains, fully justified their reputations. The coming of the Arabs under Okba in 682 was of far greater moment, and instilled in the natives the greed for conquest, and laid the foundations for their conversion to Islam. The force of ten thousand Arabs and Egyptians with whom Tarik, the Berber general who commanded the Arab armies in North Africa, held the Moroccan side of the Straits of Gibraltar in 710 was trebled by the recruiting of Berber mercenaries, his augmented force being large enough by the following year to permit him to cross the straits and invade Spain, burning his boats behind him. By 714 Tarik had pushed as far northward as the foot of the Pyrenees. In 718 the Moslem invaders, having subjugated Spain, crossed the mountains into Gaul, but their triumphal onsweep was arrested by the solid power of the Franks under Charles Martel, the Hammer of God, at Poitiers, which might be called the high-water mark of Islam. While the invasion of Gaul was still in progress, the Berbers who had settled in northwestern Spain revolted against their Arab rulers, and in 739 the Berbers of Morocco followed suit with equal success, throwing off the Arab yoke and setting up one of their own chieftains, Maisara, as an independent ruler.