in a very favourable light; and the Cantabrians and Asturians, too, defended themselves in their mountains almost as in fortresses. All Spain is full of towns. Modern Andalusia, the country of the Turdetani, claims a very ancient civilisation, for its inhabitants had a literature and laws composed in verses, and are also said to have had a kind of historical books. In the traditions of the Greeks, Iberia belongs to Hesperia, and their earliest information about it refers to _Tartessus_, which was visited at an early period by the Phocaeans. Its situation is beyond a doubt; it is justly placed in the neighbourhood of Seville, near the mouth of the Baetis; but whether it was a town or a country, whether as a town it was different from Hispalis, or whether it was identical with ancient Hispalis, these are questions which we can answer only by conjectures. GADES (_Gadir_, in Phoenician and Hebrew “a fence”) is the most ancient settlement of which we have any accurate information. In the Heracleae, the island on which Gades was situated was called _Erythea_, and the ancients say that it consisted of two islands, a circumstance which has caused much difficulty to modern geographers, as it was impossible to find the two islands. But no Andalusian would be puzzled by it. Cadiz, together with Leon, now certainly forms one island, but originally Cadiz was an island by itself, and its present union with Isla de Leon is the consequence of a causeway, which was made at a time unknown to us, from Gades to the larger island; this artificial causeway is discernible even at the present day. Gades was a Phoenician settlement, independent of Carthage, and as truly Punic as the latter city itself. But when the prosperity of Carthage rose higher and higher, and when, at the same time, that of the other Phoenician colonies was sinking more and more, then Gades also was obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of Carthage. Nothing is more natural and more in accordance with human passions and feelings, than that this Punic city was more hostile to the Carthaginians than any other place that had been subdued by them; we cannot, therefore, be surprised at finding that, in the course of the second Punic war, its hatred of Carthage led it to declare in favour of the Romans, as Utica did afterwards. Hence Gades obtained very favourable terms from the Romans, and remained a privileged city until the time of the emperors; afterwards it received the Roman franchise. Cadiz is one of those places which experienced scarcely any reverses of fortune in ancient times; and, with the exception of the barbarous invasion of the Arabs, I do not know that Cadiz was ever visited by a single misfortune.