Few histories afford lessons of greater value than those of Spain and Portugal. They teem with proofs that independence and liberty are not less important to the wealth and political power of a country than to its happiness; that neither natural advantages nor the character of the inhabitants, neither increase of territory nor external peace and domestic tranquillity can in any measure counterbalance the destructive effects of a foreign yoke, or of a despotic government. The Spanish peninsula, considered as a whole, combines most of the advantages of an insular, with those of a continental, position. Almost entirely surrounded by the sea, Spain is an island with regard to trade and fisheries; whilst the neck of land that connects her with France at once furnishes in the Pyrenees a mountainous barrier against that country, and preserves her from entire dependence upon winds and waves in her external relations. In the climate, the genial warmth of the south of Europe is tempered by sea-breezes, in nearly every direction, and the fertile soil yields equally the necessaries and the luxuries of life--corn, fruit, wine, fine merino wool, and olive oil. The mountains abound in mineral treasures, and afforded in early times one of the principal supplies of gold and silver. The natives of this favoured land are brave, sober, hardy, and enterprising. Yet notwithstanding all these sources of prosperity, Spain, which in the sixteenth century startled Europe with the first fears of universal monarchy, was long the most enslaved, oppressed, ignorant, and indigent, of civilised countries.[b] In the earliest stage of its history we find Spain occupied by a comparatively homogeneous people--the Iberians, who are related as to language; but this is probably only the result of a long, already complete development and does not at all represent the original state of the country. Unfortunately, prehistoric investigation in Spain is too far behind to offer much towards a solution of even the most pressing problems. We may assume primarily that the Pyrenean peninsula, like northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Asia, was originally settled by that short-headed, dark-haired, and light-skinned race for whom the name of Armenoids, or, from a philological standpoint, of Alarodians, has been suggested.