THE MERINO BREED. 127 



and the sorghi, with wheat and other cerealia. Numerous 

 varieties of Sheep occupy the plains and mountainous coun- 

 try. Some produce a long wool, deficient in the property of 

 felting, but fitted for the manufacture of the looser fabrics, 

 as carpets and flannels, as well as serges and the lightei 

 tissues. These long-woolled Sheep are found in the lower 

 and more cultivated countries. The short-woolled Sheep in- 

 habit, for the most part, the sandy downs, and the mountains 

 and elevated plains of the interior, where a finer herbage 

 prevails. They are altogether distinct from the larger Sheep 

 of the richer plains, although both have been largely mingled 

 in blood together, and have produced a mixed progeny, which 

 is very numerous. 



This fine country, so rich and beautiful, has rarely been 

 permitted to avail itself of its unrivalled resources. With a 

 few happy intervals, the history of Spain is one of intestine 

 troubles, of foreign wars, of civil intolerance, and religious 

 bigotry. Its former inhabitants, apparently of the same 

 great family of mankind which peopled Gaul and other coun- 

 tries of Western Europe, were early visited, for the purposes 

 of commerce, by Phoenician voyagers, and subsequently by 

 the Samians and other Greeks, who were permitted to esta- 

 blish towns on the coasts of the Mediterranean. These 

 strangers at first contented themselves with their little mari- 

 time colonies, and with the means of intercourse which these 

 afforded with the native inhabitants ; but at length the Phoe- 

 nicians, with that desire of colonization which distinguished 

 them, founded the city of Gades, now Cadiz, beyond the 

 Gaditanian Strait. The natives, alarmed at this encroach- 

 ment, prepared to attack the intruders ; when the latter, in 

 an evil hour, called to their aid the Carthaginians, then the 

 most powerful maritime people of the Mediterranean. Dis- 

 regarding its allies, this ambitious state began, on its own 

 account, a system of cruel conquest, penetrating through the 

 very heart of the country to the Ebro, establishing fortresses 

 and founding cities, amongst which was the noble city of 



