climate the most conducive to health, and the most favourable to pleasure. The kingdom contains immenfe riches; gold, precious stones, and iron, ftill more useful, wait but for the hand of the workman to recompence his labours. The foil, without requiring a fatiguing cul, tivation, is naturally fertile, and produces every neceffary of life: the men who inhabited it were, according to historians, robust and warlike. By what means, then, has this vast monarchy, which could never be fubjugated by want, so often become the prey of its neighbours? The folution of this curious problem must be fought in the intestine wars of the colonists and the native inhabitants. This country, unfortunate by the beneficence of nature, was long a scene of bloodfhed, and ever difputed and envied. These feem to have been the unhappy confequences of its mild and fertile climate, which became the nursery of rival and inimical nations.

Spain is bounded on the north by the Pyrenees, which feparate it from France; on the east by the Mediterranean, on the fouth by the Streights of Gibraltar, and on the weft by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean it is upwards of two hundred and fixty leagues in length, from the fouth-weft to the north-east, and a hundred and feventy leagues in breadth.

The highest mountains of Spain are the Pyrenees, which extend from the Ocean to to the Mediterranean. The mountains of Oca, those of Guadarrama, which feparate the two Caftiles, and the Sierra Morena which borders upon Andalufia, and feems to render it inacceffible to the rest of the kingdom.

This peninfula is watered by many very confiderable rivers: these are upwards of an hundred and fifty in number; but the most distinguished by their extent, breadth and depth, in a word, thofe which in their course swallow up the others, and afterwards empty their wa

ters.

ters into the fea, are the Ebro, the Guadalquivir, the Tagus, the Guadiana, the Douro, the Guadalaviar, and the Segura. In giving a defcription of each province, I fhall have occafion to fpeak of the rivers by which they are watered, and to fix the place of their fource, and that where they are received into the ocean.

Spain, from its pofition, climate and fertility, has been the victim of hostile nations. The Phoenicians are the first of which we find traces in hiftory. This people, to whom commerce taught philofophy, landed upon the coasts of Spain, and their firft fettlement was, it is faid, at Cadiz. The native favages did not think themselves fufficiently powerful to repel the new comers, or thefe, at first, treated them with mildness, and thereby gained their efteem and admiration, and were even aided by them in some of their firft enterprizes. The Phoenicians founded a colony upon that coaft which naVOL. III. C

ture

ture had marked out to become the cen

ter of commerce. The neighbouring favages foon received laws, which were presently followed by their natural confequences, manners, habits and morals. Thus commerce poffeffes the means of ennobling itself, and covers, with a refpectable veil, the interest by which it is animated. The Phoenicians, at first, made feveral voyages with the confent of the natives: they acquired, in exchange for their merchandize, certain portions of land which they were defirous to occupy, and the first years of this alliance were for them equally peaceful and lucrative; but becoming more avaricious, and the old inhabitants better understanding their true interefts, they foon ftained with blood a country inhabited by people whom they were come to civilife. However, if it be true that men are rendered more happy by being enlightened, the Phoenicians became the first benefactors and legiflators of Spain. Their fettlements extended to the fouth

ern

ern coasts, and into the country as far as Cordova.

Much about the fame time, the Greeks or Phoenicians, after having founded Marseilles, went to Spain and planted there feveral colonies; they poffeffed a part of the kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia; their fettlements were afterwards extended to Arragon; and, according to Strabo, as far as Galicia.

The Carthaginians, not lefs defirous of profit and of plunder, and being merchants and navigators as well as their rivals, thought proper to difpute with them a foil lefs fcorched and more fertile than that of Africa; they also founded colonies, but not without first having fhed much blood.

The ancient inhabitants having but few other wants than thofe of nature, and not discovering their future tyrants in the new colonists, who came from all quarters

C 2