A CCLIMA TIZA TION. 5 1 1 



There must, then, enter into the account some favorable circumstances 

 derived from the mixture of foreign blood which it carries in its veins. 

 This foreign blood is chiefly Semitic. As is well known, the Phoeni- 

 cians, a people having more than one point of analogy with the mari- 

 time powers of our own days, were the first colonizers known in his- 

 tory. The Phoenicians were Semites ; and archaeological traces of 

 their establishments are still to be found in Malta. They founded 

 Carthage, and covered the Spanish coast with colonies, which proba- 

 bly extended for a considerable distance into the interior of the coun- 

 try. As the latest archaeological researches prove, they colonized a 

 good part of Greece. Their influence was so great, and their exten- 

 sion was so wide, that it would have been very strange if they had 

 not contracted in Spain and elsewhere numerous family connections, 

 and thus made their blood participate in the development of the races 

 which have survived them in those countries. In less ancient times, 

 most of the Iberian Peninsula was for hundreds of years in the power 

 of the Arabs, or rather of Moors from Africa. These conquerors, who 

 founded large cities and peopled entire districts, so that the Yalencian 

 garden and the valley of Granada still retain their Moorish aspect, 

 who, in short, spread themselves over the whole country, undoubtedly 

 left a numerous posterity behind them. And as the Spanish lan- 

 guage is full of Moorish reminiscences, and Arabic words still adorn 

 its vocabulary, how can the nation count the descendants of those 

 Moors who hide their Semitic origin under Spanish names ? 



The race which now peoples those countries is, therefore, a mixed 

 one ; and there is no nation, even to us Germans, that has not fur- 

 nished its quota to it. The Visigoths passed through Spain. They 

 were dissolved there, and so completely absorbed that not a vestige of 

 them is left, except, perhaps, in the institutions in which the most 

 eminent Spaniards acknowledge, not Avithout a feeling of gratitude, 

 the contribution of Germanic genius to the development of their 

 nation. Thus, from this fusion of Iberians, Phoenicians, Moors, Ro- 

 mans, Celts, and Visigoths, to which may be added, perhaps, a few 

 other German elements, such as the Alani, has risen the modern Span- 

 ish people, a mixed people, in the elements of which the pure Aryan 

 race enters in part, but is nowise preponderant. If, now, we should 

 undertake to say, " Wherever a Spaniard can go I can go too, for the 

 same blood flows in the veins of both of us," we should be in great 

 error. No ; Spanish blood is not the same as flows in our veins ; no 

 more than is the blood of the Hindoos of to-day, with whom we have 

 but lately tried to make a common ancestry, but whom no one now 

 regards as a primitive race. We now trace our afiiliation to that 

 people which, coming down from the north, was crossed, higher 

 classes and all, with the people that occupied the peninsula long before 

 the arrival of the conquerors, and who were black. 



There are, then, mixed races, to a certain extent more mixed than 



