The principal rivers are the _Baetis_ (Guadalquivir), _Anas_ (Guadiana), _Tagus_ (Tago), _Durius_ (Douro), _Minius_ (Minho), and in the east, the _Turia_ (Guadalaviar) and the _Iberus_ (Ebro). In antiquity, Spain was particularly celebrated for its gold and silver mines, and for the gold found in the sand of its rivers, as in that of the Tagus, which, for this reason, is called by poets _aurifer amnis_. The largest silver mines, where both silver and lead were found, existed in the territory of Carthagena in Murcia; but Asturia, too, contained veins of precious metal. Spanish wool was not particularly valued in antiquity, and it was not till the middle ages that sheep-breeding was improved in Spain. Baetica produced abundance of grain, besides which the ancients derived from other parts of Spain a kind of hemp, called _spartus_, which was spun like hemp, and out of which ropes and cables were manufactured. The ancients were universally of opinion that the Spaniards, exclusive of the Celtic inhabitants and the few Greeks and Punians who had settled there, consisted of two nations, the _Turdetanians_ and the _other Spaniards_. This opinion originating with Artemidorus, is set forth by Strabo so confidently, that we must believe him to have had other and more weighty authorities than Artemidorus. They even speak of a difference in language. For a long time, I too entertained this opinion, because I trusted the ancients; but I have only a very vague notion of the Iberian language. W. von Humboldt is the only man in Europe who has examined those languages with a true grammatical genius, and he has declared that all the proper names from one end of Spain to the other, absolutely belong to one and the same language, and that the names of places among the Cantabri, Ilergetes, Lusitani, Turdetani, etc., must all be traced to roots in the Cantabrian language. To this argument we must submit; nothing can be said against it: in matters of this kind, the later Greeks often went very far astray, for which reason we ought not to admit them as authorities without great caution. But, admitting that all names of places are Cantabrian, the opinion of the ancients may be based upon something else, viz., the knowledge that the nation, during its extension from the south to the northern parts, underwent various modifications, and that more especially those who dwelt in the north among the conquered people, assumed a character quite different from that of the inhabitants of Andalusia, who lived by themselves.