Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/485

] passed under its dominion. This dominion was so widely extended in Spain that no less than 200 towns are said to have been founded by them, some of which, such as Malacca, Carteja, Hispalis (Sevilla), still remain. The great mineral riches and natural fertility of the country caused a trade to spring up, and, as in the case of most of our colonies, the trade was rapidly followed by supremacy, which, if the Romans had been conquered, would have turned the Iberian peninsula into a Carthaginian province, and might have resulted in Carthage becoming the mistress of the world. The silver enabled them to make that metal a standard of value, and thus gave enormous facilities for traffic, while the tin and the copper gave them the materials for making bronze, used so largely in the Mediterranean trade.

The adventurous Phœnician mariners having established themselves in Spain, pushed their enterprises farther and farther northwards along the shores of the ocean. According to Pliny, Himilco set out from Gades on his voyage of discovery about the same time that the Carthaginians sent Hanno to plant factories on the west coast of Africa, in B.C. 500. He first rounded the Sacred Promontory (Cape St. Vincent), coasted along the shores of Lusitania (Portugal), and made for the harbour of the Artabri (Bay of Corunna), passing