CHAP. II. 



SPAIN. 97 



If we may give credit to a fragment still re- 

 maining of that ancient historian Agatharchidas, 

 there was a time when the value of silver in 

 Arabia was tenfold that of gold, owing to the 

 abundance of the latter and the scarcity of the 

 former metal. How far this may be accurate it 

 is impossible to say, though, from the direct in- 

 tercourse of Arabia with India, and from the 

 Arabians knowing nothing of Spain but through 

 the Tyrians, it is highly probable that the re- 

 lative value of the two metals might have been 

 widely different in that age from what exists at 

 present. The Tyrians, however, certainly con- 

 veyed much of the silver they procured in Spain 

 to Arabia, and there exchanged it for gold to 

 great advantage ; and there seems traces of an 

 intercourse between Tyre and the countries be- 

 yond the Straits of Babelmandel, if not with 

 India itself. This view of the relative value of 

 gold to silver in different parts of the world in 

 very ancient times, may serve to account in 

 some degree for the curious spectacle which 

 the extensive trade and the vast wealth of that 

 naturally poor country, Phoenicia, exhibited in 

 the early period of the history of mankind. 



We return from these matters of trade in 

 remote ages to the mines of Spain. They are 

 by all ancient authors represented as highly 

 productive, but none of the accounts they have 

 transmitted to us are sufficiently statistical to 



VOL. I. H 



