Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/231

 B. in. c. ii. 6. SPAIN. 217 the Coraxi, 1 and remarkable for its beauty. Rams for the pur- pose of covering fetch a talent. The stuffs manufactured by the Saltiatae 2 are of incomparable texture. There is a super- abundance of cattle, and a great variety of game : while, on the other hand, of destructive animals there are scarcely any, with the exception of certain little hares which burrow in the ground, and are called by some leberides. 3 These creatures destroy both seeds and trees by gnawing their roots. They are met with throughout almost the whole of Iberia, 4 and extend to Marseilles, infesting likewise the islands. It is said that formerly the inhabitants of the Gymnesian islandaJ, sent a deputation to the Romans soliciting that a new land might be given them, as they were quite driven out of their country by these animals, being no longer able to stand against their vast multitudes. 6 It is possible that people should be obliged to Iiave recourse to such an expedient for help in waging war in so great an extremity, which however but sel- dom happens, and is a plague produced by some pestilential state of the atmosphere, which at other times has produced serpents and rats in like abundance ; but for the ordinary in- crease of these little hares, many ways of hunting have been devised, amongst others by wild cats from Africa, 7 trained for the purpose. Having muzzled these, they turn them into the holes, when they either drag out the animals they find there with their claws, or compel them to fly to the surface of the earth, where they are taken by people standing by for that purpose. The large amount of the exports from Turdetania is evinced by the size and number of their ships. Merchant- izesail thence to Dicaearch'ia 8 and 1 A people inhabiting the western parts of the Caucasus. 2 This name occurs only irTStrabo: of the various conjectures which have been hazarded on the subject, one of the most probable seems to be that we should read Saltigetse, a people of Bastetania, mentioned by Ptolemy. 3 These were evidently rabbits. * Spain. 5 Majorca and Minorca., 6 According to Pliny, (lib. viii. c. 55,) this deputation was sent to Augustus to demand of him a military force, apparently for the purpose of assisting the inhabitants in destroying the rabbits. The same writer has brought together a variety of instances in which cities have been abandoned or destroyed through similar causes. Vide lib. viii. c. 29. The inhabitants of Abdera in Thrace were forced to quit their city on account of the rats and frogs, and settled on the frontiers of Macedonia. (Justin. lib. xv. c. 2.) 7 Ferrets. 8 Pozzuolo.