in kindling a fire too near one of its forests, the flames burnt with such fierceness for many days, that it spread itself almost over the whole ridge, and that the intenseness of the heat melted the silver in the mines, and caused it to run down in rivulets along those hills. Again we are informed by the same respectable Roman writer, cited so often before,* that when the Carthagenians, the next in order of the successive invaders of Spain, first came thither, they found silver in such amazing plenty, that their utensils, even their very mangers, were made of it, and their horses shod with it. And Pliny mentions several rich mines of silver dug there by the Carthaginians, one of which called Bebel, from the finder of it, yielded Hannibal three hundred pounds of silver per day.+ The excellent historian Livy, also acquaints us, that Scipio, upon his return to Rome, carried with him fourteen thousand three hundred and forty-two pounds of silver, besides an immense quantity of coin, clothes, corn, arms, and other valuable things. L. * Strabo, lib. iii. p. 256. Liv. lib. i. ii. and iii. Lentulus Lentulus is said to have brought away a still much larger treasure; to wit, forty-four thousand pounds of silver, and two thousand five hundred and fifty of gold, besides the money which he divided among his soldiery. L. Manlius brought with him twelve hundred pounds of silver, and about thirty of gold. Corn. Lentulus, after having governed the Hither Spain two years, brought away one thousand five hundred and fifteen pounds of gold, and of silver two thousand, besides thirty four thousand five hundred and fifty denarii in ready coin; whilst his collegue brought from Farther Spain fifty thousand pounds of silver. What is still more surprising, is, that these immense sums, amounting in all to one hundred and eleven thousand five hundred and forty-two pounds weight of silver, four thousand and ninety-five of gold, besides coin and other things of value, were obtained from that country in the short space of nine years; for just so much time elapsed between the first and the last of these Roman prætors; and not long after they had been as severely pillaged, in all probability, by the Carthaginians. The The Phoenicians having established themselves, as well as the religious rites of their country, at the great commercial port of Gades, or Cades, were not long in making themselves masters of other places on the ri rich Iberian coast, equally convenient for carrying on that traffic for which they were so celebrated. The principal of these was Tartessus, situated still farther west, and the capital of an island of the same name, formed by the two streams by which the Bætis anciently emptied itself into the sca, though one of them has been since stopped up. To these dup. two grand emporia were brought down that river the gold, silver, and other valuable productions of Bætica, the modern Andalusia, to be conveyed thence in Phœnician bottoms, (to use a modern maritime phrase,) to those countries of the east, Persia, Assyria, India, and Egypt, the magnificence, luxury, and military enterprizes, of whose sovereigns rendered constant supplies of those precious commodities necessary to them. Their own country itself produced many articles of superior elegance, very eagerly sought after by those ostentatious and effeminate nations of Asia. Among these the principal 1 principal were the purple of Tyre, their rich tapestry, and the exceeding fine linen fabricated in the Phoenician looms. The glass of Sidon, the mother of Tyre, was another celebrated commodity, exported to the countries of Asia by the Phoenician navigators; and, in the extensive manufacture of this curious article, they had arrived to such a point of perfection, that not only plates nearly as large as any fabricated by the moderns were made in the glass-houses of Sidon, from the finé sand found on the shore of that city, but we also know, from very high authority in antiquity, that they possessed the art of giving them a variety of the most striking and beautiful colours. The curious artificers of that nation were also celebrated for their skill in working in those costly metals that formed the cargoes of their ships, and in the ivory which they obtained in abundance from the neighbouring regions of Africa. For that expensive and beautiful dye above-mentioned, which rendered the Tyrians famous over all the world, and which at this day is for its transcendent excellence appropiated to adorn the robes of princes and magistrates, they are said to have been indebted to mere accident. A sheppard's dog, incited by hunger to range the the sea shore, near that city, seized with his teeth the shell of the fish called MUREX, which, breaking in his mouth, stained it of the colour so much admired. The genius of that mercantile people took advantage of the accident, and, collecting a quantity of those shells, impressed the colour obtained from them on the stuffs fabricated by them; which soon became in general request throughout the East, especially at the courts of princes This species of purple fish is said to have been peculiar to the shore of Tyre, and is thought to be extinct: at least it is not now to be found there. The antiquity of the discovery is evident, from this colour being so particularly mentioned both in the Mosaic writings and in Homer.* The astonishing perfection at which they had arrived, in the working in metals and ivory, is demonstrated by the sumptuous designs of that kind undertaken and finished by the artists of that nation in the temple of Jerusalem, and in the palace of the magnificent Solomon; the former abounding with emblematical devices in cast or sculptured gold, and the latter • Consult Exodus, chap. xxv. v. 4. and (Homer's Iliad, lib. vi. v. 219. adorned |