388 



of this acliieveineiit, says Don Servando, that Hercules constructed the 

 celebrated tower, and in the foundations deposited the head of the prin- 

 cipal tyrant Gerion, and therefore the tower was called the Tower of 

 Hercules, and founded the city of Corunna. 



All this farrago of fiction and fable the worthy Bishop of Orense, in 

 his MS. history of Spain, has given a degree of currency to that its ori- 

 ginal concocter might not have been able to have effected for it. 



To whatever place our Brigantes went to colonize," says Lopez 

 Madera, in his Excelencias de La Monarquia de Espaha" (Madrid, 

 folio, 1625, p. 26), ''they retained and used this name, derived from 

 our King Brigo, as appears from the accounts of those who passed into 

 England, and the mode in which Juvenal makes mention of them (in 

 Satir. 14); and Polydore Yirgil names those who passed into Ireland 

 and Scotland. And notwithstanding that in some places they had cor- 

 rupted and improperly used this name, taking it for the name of the 

 suburbs of the chief cities ; but in the greatest part of Elanders, Ger- 

 many, and those northern countries, they retained this name in its proper 

 and original signification."^' 



The Padre Mohedano, in the Historia Litteraria de Espana, desde 

 su Primeira Poblacion" (8vo., Madrid, 1766), in reference to various 

 early migrations from Spain, observes: — Some of those Iberians who 

 fled from their own country in consequence of the incursions and ravages 

 of the Celts (Gauls) settled ultimately, there is reason to believe, in 

 Cantabria, which we know in ancient times had more extended limits 

 than in later times. Other circumstances may have led to the frequent 

 passage of Gauls and Iberians across the Pyrenees. Eor example, the 

 great dearth and famine which Palestine suffered, and Egj^t, in the 

 time of the patriarch Jacob, which, according to the expression of Scrip- 

 ture (Genesis, xlvii. 13), was universal over all the world. This might 

 explain the nature of the sufferings said to have been caused in Spain 

 (by the great drought), and which we are told compelled many of its 

 inhabitants to fly to other countries. Of another great drought Strabo 

 makes mention, and cites many authors in reference to it, although 

 of a much later date than that of Spain, having occurred, it is said, in 

 the reign of Artaxerxes, in which drought rivers and lakes, as well as 

 wells, were dried up. By these testimonies we do not intend to confirm 

 the general belief in the statements of our chronicles of a prodigious 

 drought, which some writers extend to a period of twenty-six years, 

 others to a shorter period; because we do not find authentic grounds in 

 the writings of ancient times to confirm these statements, which for 

 other reasons appear to us unlikely to be true, j^either can we approve 

 of the statement made by Eerreras on the authority of Eratosthenes, cited 

 by Strabo (lib. i,), and also by Pliny (lib. iii., cap.i.), to the effect Hhe 

 great drought' wbich prevailed in Spain was the cause of the passage 

 being opened to which the name has been given of the Straits of Gibral- 



* " Greg. Lopez Madera Excellen. de la Mon. de Espaaa," p. 26. 



