CHAP. II. 



SPAIN. 91 



persons, to the conclusion, that the Tarshish of 

 the Jews and the TaprT^og of the Greeks was a 

 country in the southernmost part of Europe 1 . 

 We read in the ancient writers of the river 

 Tartessus of the island Tartessus of a city 

 Tartessus and of a province Tartessus. From 

 these various objects to which the name is ap- 

 plied, as well as from the uncertainty of the 

 names given by ancient geography, we may, per- 

 haps, safely infer the little dependence which can 

 be placed on the name of the precise place. It 

 may not be unnatural to suppose that the first 

 visiters gave a general name to a large country, 

 in the same manner as the discoverers of America 

 gave to that continent, and the islands collec- 

 tively, the name of the Western Indies. Tar- 

 shish, which was in the westernmost part of 

 Europe, according to the Greeks, may then 

 comprehend the whole of the division of Spain 

 and Portugal, from the mouth of the river Ebro 

 to Cape St. Vincent, or it may have included 

 the whole of both the modern kingdoms of the 

 peninsula 5 as far as they were known to the 

 Phoenicians and Carthaginians. 



It is more difficult to fix the precise date of 

 the first intercourse between Phoenicia and 

 Spain, though the commerce must have been 



1 See particularly Strabo, book xii. cap. 3. 



