CHAPTERII.

CHAPTERII.SHEMISH, THE GARDENS OF THE HESPERIDES.We very soon came upon another lake which has no regular opening to the sea, though the bank of sand is occasionally moved. It must have been here that Don Sebastian projected making the entrance for his internal harbour; but the lake with which this entrance communicates is of small extent, apparently of no great depth, and separated from the long lake by a neck of land of no great elevation, but which from its sandy nature it would be a great enterprise to cut through. We passed over a good deal of flat ground, like Hungary, completely under cultivation, and the fields perfectly clean: the douars had the look of villages, and we could scarcely believe that there were not built houses amongst them.Towards evening we came upon a country of a new aspect—broken ground, aluminous shale, covered with a straggling oak forest. Herds of cattle were pointed out to us, which were said to be turned out there to multiply without the care of man; and we came upon a douar in the midst of this forest, where I was very much tempted to bivouac for the night. It was like a scene in one of the wooded vales of Western Greece: however, we pushed on for Larache, the gardens of which we entered long after it was pitch-dark. The road between them was sand: there was no possibility of getting water either by fountain, stream, or well—such is the site of the Gardens of the Hesperides! I had to postpone the satisfaction of my curiosity till the morrow’s light, and entered the capital of the King of the Giants with that sort of reverence and awe which I had felt in approaching the ruins of Stonehenge.We were led through a labyrinth of strange and precipitous streets, till we came down to the lower wall on the side of the harbour: the houses looked like the little tombs at Pompeii by the wayside. We were received by the English Consular Agent, a Genoese, whom, notwithstanding his European habiliments, we might have taken for a Moor by his quiet demeanour, and his unobtrusive attention to all our wants. A scene rose next morning such as deserved to shine on the groves of the Danaïdes. Before one sweeps with many a bend the stream, on whose tranquil breast reposes the wreck of the navy of Morocco—a corvette, two brigs, and a schooner. A high bank of sand shuts out the sea, save at the narrow bar. In front of the town a verdant plain is spread; all round it flows the river, and beyond it rises an amphitheatre of broken hills of a lively mountain aspect, and with other forms and other colours than those of the Zahel. Over these were scattered gardens; but the gardens of Morocco, which, unlike those of any other land, are embellished by the bank of cactus, that serves them for a wall, and painted with the leaden green of the aloe.To the east, and opposite the sea entrance, there is a detached hill, like that upon which are situated the ruins of Epidaurus, a spot which must be ever green in the memory of travellers in Greece. Considering this to be a last chance of finding a Phœnician city, I commenced inquiries, and was told that the hill was covered with ruins which had been deserted from the memory of man, and that the hill was calledShemish. I at once determined to delay my journey in order to devise means to visit it. This was no easy matter, and I thought the best plan was to try and get into a boat without my guards, and then trust to chance and perseverance for being able to push on.Having no suspicion, they allowed me to get into a boat, accompanied by a soldier of the town. We embarked at a jetty, close to which lay in tier in a strong tide-way, four tolerably-sized European vessels, laden with corn, bark and wool, waiting for an opportunity of getting over the bar. We kept close to the bank of sand thrown up by the sea, behind which lay the dismantled and perishing vessels I have already mentioned. The water was much discoloured; and, like that of the Seboo, bore traces of chalk. I observed something white on the bank: pulling to the spot, I found it really to be chalk, an outlyer standing on its edge. It was harder than the common chalk of England. The flints were large masses, and there was a coating on them of crystals of carbonate of lime. The masses of flints were evidently the same as those which had become gasule. Close by there was a hill like an artificial mound, and on it the regular sheep-walks of our chalk ranges. Under it we landed, as it adjoined Shemish and was connected with it by a low neck. The rocky eminence of Shemish is sandstone, not that which encrusts the Zahel, but a compact and ancient rock, and sometimes approaching to granular quartz.From the top of Shemish the prospect is striking, from the extraordinary windings of the river to the south and east: it turns back upon itself, more like the windings of a serpent than the meanderings of a stream. Hence it derives its name ofElcos, or the boa; hence, too, the fable of the dragon. There was no fable in the guardianship. The protection was not in his folds, but in his foaming head—the bar that closed the entrance.In Pliny’s time the little plain was only partially formed. “At thirty-two thousand paces from this place (Tangier) is Lixos, of which the ancients relate so many fables, and which was made a colony by the cruelty of Claudius Cæsar. There was the kingdom of Anteus; there his strife with Hercules; there the gardens of the Hesperides. An estuary, with a meandering course, communicates with the sea, over which the dragon is said to have kept watch: an island is embraced within the curves of the water, which, though but slightly raised above the surrounding land, is never covered by the tide. There is a temple to Hercules, and some wild olives that are found there are all that remain of its groves, said to bear golden fruit.”He then proceeds to speak of the “portentosa mendacia” of the Greeks in respect to this site; and it reminded me of the “quicquid Græcia mendax audet in historia” of Juvenal, speaking of the canal of Xerxes, which, disbelieved by the Roman satirist, may be seen and traced at this hour. So, in like manner, the golden fruit of Lixos blossoms and ripens to this day, despite the incredulity of the Roman naturalist.These ruins have not been hitherto described; they will soon be demolished. Walls which, I was told, had been some years ago continuous, and much higher than at present, surround the crest of an irregular hill: the circuit may be three miles. Where I first came upon them I found walls in tapia and mortar, and stones, having entirely the Moorish character. I began to apprehend the repetition of the disappointment I had so often experienced.The rolled fragments of stone and lime would not alone do. I wanted some chiselling, and something to resemble the bulwarks which Nonnus tells us Cadmus (i. e.the Phœnician) gave to the hundred cities he planted in thisborder:—-δῶκ’ δ’ ἑκαστῇΔύσβατα λαϊνέοις ὑψούμενα τείχεα πύργοις.And I did come on evidences indisputable. These were hewn stone, neither Roman, Hellenic, nor Cyclopic. They were large, not in regular tiers, nor polygonal, and joined with cement. One stone which I measured was ten feet by three. The angles were thus constructed. The walls were in rude work of stone and lime, which, but for the connexion in which I found them, might have passed for recent. They exactly resemble the ruins which are called “Old Tangier.”I now at length did see a Phœnician wall, and knew what it was. On the summit of the hill a more ancient building seems to have been converted into a magazine:[224]it is roofed in and terraced over. Near it there is the circular end of a building, standing about twenty feet in height and thirty in diameter. There were long, vaulted chambers, in pairs, like congreve locks, arched and double, twenty feet long, six feet wide, and twelve feet high. They were scattered all over the place, within the walls and without. I went into nine or ten of them. There was no mark of water on the sides. I hardly think they could have been cisterns. I could not imagine to what use they were destined.[225]This was all I could make out by scrambling through the thick brushwood for the greater portion of the day.The emblem of peace is busily engaged in upturning these precious remains. The branches of the wild olive are rounded like the oak, and do not, like those of the grafted tree, adjust themselves to the form of the buildings in which they have struck root, as in the ruins of Greece and Italy. They are here thickly planted, and their roots and branches are so many wedges driven into the walls. I observed a stone, which could not be under ten tons, lifted up from the top of a wall, between the branches of a tree, which again was yielding under its weight. It reminded me of the admired, but false, metaphor of Lamartine, when he compares the heart, early love-stricken, to a tree that bears aloft the hatchet-head, which had been buried in its stem.The rock was covered with a variety of plants, which would have presented a rich harvest to a botanist: I can notice but some belonging to the times of old. Hesperus, fresh leaping from the ocean, here found in every season all flowers for his wreath; the lotus, the myrtle, and the palm; the pine, the arar, which represents the cypress. The acanthus covered the ground with its deep green, glossy, and spreading leaves. The ivy, instead of crawling over stones or trunks, spreads over the boughs of trees, and hangs in festoons between them, with a thin cord-like stem, and delicate leaves studding it upon either side. The berries are in clusters, like diminutive bunches of grapes, and the image of the vine is completed by spiral tendrils. I now saw why it was that the ivy had been appropriated to Bacchus; it was the image of the vine fitted for a crown. I took one of its long shoots, and wreathed it into a chaplet, and placed it on the head of one of the wine-denying Moors, a boatman who had accompanied me, and he was no less delighted at the implied courtesy than I at the real beauty of the object.Perhaps, however, the connexion of the ivy and Bacchus may be no more than a pun. To him were consecrated a plant and a bird, and both had the same name,κίσσαandκίσσος, the magpie and the ivy. Bochart makes out the proper name of Bacchus to have been nearly the same, and himself the chief of the first of the wine-growing countries, the founder of an empire which conquered India, and which has left behind monuments to substantiate any fable which Greek fancy could create. In fact, Bacchus is no other than Chus, orBar Chusii, whom we call Nimrod, and the Greeks Nebrodes, being a great hunter, and therefore painted with the skins of wild animals—chiefly the tiger, ornimra—the spoils of which cover the shoulders of Bacchus, while the captive animal is yoked to his car.The crown for the festivities of Apollo, I now saw was neither our laurel nor the bay, the branches of which never could have been used for such a purpose, as any gem or statue will show. At Shemish a plant luxuriates which possesses all the qualities requisite for this ornament. It is a bush, standing four or five feet high, which sends up yearly twigs, round, smooth, green, and pliant. The leaves are set along it alternately, and these are soft, glossy, delicate in texture and elegant in form, and yet of extraordinary durability; and the twigs are just the length required for a chaplet: a red berry hangs to the leaf by a fine thread, while simultaneously it bears the flower, which is a small star of six fleshy points, of the palest green, with an amethyst cup in the centre.[226]The tree of Minerva, in all its stubborn and unsubjugated vigour, here flourishes in scorn on Neptune’s border, and the oak of Jupiter, presenting food for man, completes the assemblage of these leafy reminiscences of time gone by, veiling the grey ruins that the elements had not yet destroyed, nor man laid low. Here were the things of Nature, which they in their time admired, leaf for leaf, and line for line; bright, gay, verdant, with their shining dewdrops, and their buzzing insects; and there, after thirty centuries, lay the stones they had chiselled, and the mortar they had mixed. The air of such a place breathes of nepenthes,—the poppy of memory, not forgetfulness. It is covered with a mirage of recollections, on which the spirit floats, and with which it mingles. Its solitude invited the busy throng of other times. There was the work of their hands, the place of their choice, the field of their labour, the haven of their traffic. There the horizon they looked upon; the plants they gathered, the trees they cultivated, the sun that awoke the wind that refreshed them. I saw them in the choice they had made, and lived amongst them, in seeing what they saw, and feeling as they felt. As an angel that has conversed with man, they have taken their flight—they have disappeared, as if, like the sun, to visit other climes. Their western-bound prows, perchance, followed his course, flying from the Chaldean or the Macedonian; their last glances may have rested on this height, where I first beheld walls which their hands had reared. Or this might have been the end of their pilgrimage. They were beyond the reach of the conqueror and Libya, which had offered an asylum to the fugitives of Jericho, and Moab might have yielded one also to those of Tyre.I had been astonished at finding no fragment whatever of marble. I cannot say but that this raised some doubt in my mind; but on getting down to the bank of the river, to the southward, I came uponnine lime-kilns. There was a little commerce established, a landing-place for the boats, and large sugar-casks for the lime. They have now exhausted the quarry. The quantity extracted must have been immense, for they have been at work for two years. The contents of one kiln had been drawn out, and they were about to slake them. I pulled out entire one morsel, which resembled the front part of the Egyptian Pshent.[227]The lime is used for a new palace of the Caïd, for government stores, and the repairs of the batteries, suggested by the French bombardment.Thus have been disposed of relics that might have thrown light on the early history of this portion of the world, and supplied in some degree the loss of the libraries of Carthage and Alexandria. To add to the provocation, close by they had an inexhaustible store of material, more easily calcinable, had they but known. I have been informed, however, that it was with the purpose of destroying an object of interest to Europeans that the order was sent. If so, this is one of the effects of thejournéeordéjeûnerof Isly.“Sit ne aliqua super spes,”exclaims Eckhel,“fore ut plus lucis his Phœniciorum reliquiis adfundatur? Aio superesse exiguam nisi ex terræ sinu proferantur monumenta copiosiora.”How many, alas! since he wrote have been plastered into walls. Strange fate, that of these explorers of the land and sea—these instructors in all art and science—every trace should have disappeared! There remains no shred of their tissues, no tint of their dyes, no limb of their statues, no corner of their palaces, no stone of their temples: no annalist has noted for us their facts; no epic has been built up from their story; no Sophocles replaced their heroes on a mimic stage; no Pindar prolonged the echo of their chariot wheels.But though until I visited this place I did not know even where to go to look for a wall of this construction, from the scanty fragments that have been gleaned we learn, that all that Greece and Rome could boast are nothing more than monuments oftheirgreatness,[228]and of a greatness in which they have no compeers. All other dominations have extinguished what it overshadowed, and devoured what it covered.Is not this the interpretation of the fable of the Phœnix?—a bird perishing in fire; a new life springing from its ashes. It was not the procreation of the breed; it was not the colonies that had gone forth from its loins. The parentage was spiritual, and the type revived in new matter. There was but one Phœnix. There has been but one Phœnicia, and all that we have of light and letters to this day has come from her. Her name, that of a bird, and a tree—the palm of Judæa, and the wings of her sea-faring sons.It occurred to me that Larache, as the city of Antæus and the giants, must have been that belonging to the original population, and Shemish the Phœnician settlement. This would explain that remarkable expression, “Libo-Phœnician cities.” It was not Phœnician or Carthaginian territory: it was theircities. It was not their cities among an uncultivated people; the Libyans had cities too. The cities of both were linked together, and here they were. Nor is it at this place alone. At Tangier it is precisely the same: the old city, which now I know to be Phœnician, is on the opposite side of the bay. At Arzela there are ruins of the same kind across the river; at Dar el Baida they are on the neighbouring headland. The still existing cities I, of course, take to be the original ones. They are in couples: in none of these cases could the one have supplanted the other. They owe their conjoint existence to the peculiar nature of the Phœnician settlements: they lived together, each requiring his own establishment, but neither encroaching on or displacing the other.Carthage, in the height of her power, paid ground-rent. It was not till the latter time, and in her struggles with Rome, that she sought to govern and possess, according to our present notions; and it was in Sicily and Spain that she set her hands to this craft, and brought down her own ruin.The greatness of Carthage was founded on the confidence that the native population had in her integrity.Punica fidescould not have been turned to a reproach, had it not at first represented a truth. Had she, like the English or the French, the Spaniards or the Portuguese, been even suspected of being a grasping power, she must either have become mistress of Mauritania, or been expelled from its border, or shut up in useless rocks upon its coast; and the word “Libo-Phœnician cities” would never have descended to our time.We are without any direct and positive information respecting the internal management, or the external relations of those cities, or their ties with the parent state; but a city, in every respect similarly situated, has been described by ancient authors, in a sufficiently distinct manner to put what I have said on more secure grounds than that of mere reference. The city I refer to is Emporiæ, one of the great settlements of Spain; the only one, then, not Phœnician, but founded by that branch of the Ionic Greeks which drew nearest to them in character and enterprise, and with whom alone of the Greeks they had made friendship on the field of battle.[229]It was the counterpart in Iberia of Marseilles in Gaul, and completed the range of Phocæan traffic. It was exactly what the Libo-Phœnician cities were, as its name alone suffices to show; for Emporion is not, as is supposed, a Greek, but a Phœnician word, and all these cities had the generic name of Emporiæ, having their proper name besides.Like Tyre, Emporiæ was originally on an island: on being abandoned, it was called in like mannerPalæopolis. The colonists then joined with the Hispani in the same town, which seems to have been called Indica; the tribe was called Indigetes. They were received as guests, and allowed to join their city to that of the Hispani:[230]it was thence calledDispolis. The part belonging to the Greeks looked to the sea, the other to the land: the first was four hundred paces in circuit, the second three thousand. Each people preserved its laws and customs. Intercourse, except for purposes of commerce, was forbidden; and thence, according to Livy, no dispute ever arose to interrupt the harmony of their neighbourhood during the ages of this common habitation. So unwearied was the watchfulness of the Greeks, that one-third of the male population nightly mounted guard.This vigilance—the striking contrast between those really living communities and our heaps of sand—was not peculiar to the Phocæans; nor was the disposition to grant sites for cities, and the privileges of self-government to settlers, peculiar to the Indigetes. Here is a picture of the times; and, with such modifications as circumstances cast over the delineation, we see all the other Emporia on the coasts of Libya or Iberia.I have said that Emporion was not a Greek word. The Chaldæan paraphrase (Genesisxxv.3) hasEmporiusfor merchants,Emporiothfor merchandise. Leptis is mentioned, both as one of the Emporia and one of the Lybo-Phœnician cities.[231]Livy says that Scipio spent his time between the “PunicaEmporia gentemque Garamantum.” He went now to visit the natives, now the commercial establishments, which, instead of bolts, had fortresses for their defence.Scylax couples the cities and Emporia. “The Carthaginians,” says he, “spread from the Syrtes to the Columns of Hercules.” The words are singular, and seem to mark a difficulty of expression, such as occurs when describing habits so foreign: cities along a coast, forming a nation and government apart—an empire, as it were, standing on points.[232]But so far from theπολίσματα[233]and the Emporia subjugating the native population centuries afterwards, and when the Roman sword had been thrown into the scale with the Tyrian trinkets, it was not the city that overspread the plain with its shadow, but the people of the wilderness that had assimilated to themselves the urban system, defying alike the imperial power and the metropolitan civilization.Severus, on attaining the imperial purple, sent for his sister fromLeptis, and was much ashamed of her that she could scarcely speak Latin.[234]Was it, then, Phœnician she spoke?—not at all. Sallust has told us, in his time, that the language was changed byintermarriages with the Numidians.[235]Was it a disadvantage to Rome that there was no uniformity? Had Rome been possessed with the mania of uniformity, she could at best have remained only a small state on the Tiber.The Carthaginians kept their cities distinct from the cities of the Lybians: the Romans kept their laws distinct from the customs of the country. Rome could evenuniteprovinces, strange as it may seem with our experience, without convulsing them or throwing them into rebellion, for the union was judicial, not administrative or legislative. This reserve, which was the secret of the power of Carthage, became the source of the prosperity and tranquillity of Roman Mauritania, amidst the convulsions of the rest of the empire down to the invasion of the barbarians, which—in Africa at least—were uninvited by the provincials.THE HESPERIDES.A garden is not hot-houses to force fruits, or conservatories to preserve flowers: it is forest and fountain, affording shade and water; to these you mayaddflowers and fruits. An Eastern goes to his garden to enjoy nature, not to study art[236]—goes to it for shelter in the sultry hours, or to regale himself in the even-tide. Thus says Solomon:—“A garden enclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. I am come into my garden, I have eaten my honeycomb, and have drunk my wine and my milk.”The world began with a garden. Of the first one, it is said, “the Lord planted it.” The botanist, who considered that the greatest compliment ever paid to his science was, when Christ said, “Consider the lilies of the field,” must have forgotten the workmanship of the first of orchards, for it was trees which constituted that garden. “Every tree that is pleasant to the sight or good for food,” and immediately after there are the rivers enumerated that spring in it. The garden was the first special work of Providence: it was the habitation appointed for our undefiled nature. Its culture was the first task allotted to man,—and it is sometimes the last, when all that life can yield or fortune bestow has been tried and exhausted. Tamerlane, when he had conquered the world, turned gardener at Samarkand.They can fit up any place into a garden. I have spent an evening amongst a bed of leeks, which had suddenly assumed all the pretensions of a parterre and kiosk; a few plants to lay the cushions and carpets on, a couple of glass balls for the lights, a little tin wheel, on which a jet of water was conducted, some jessamine plants detached from a wall to form a canopy over our heads, the leeks pulled up in front to open a way for the supper. This kind of garden is a sort of out-of-door existence, and essentially belonging to a people with tents, and has its conveniences and luxuries adapted for transport.There is no botany, no horticulture; their taste is ignorant. Their love of flowers is not as they are arranged in classes, multiplied in leaves, or varied in colours—it is for themselves—their natural forms, their pure colours, and their sweet odours. It is unobtrusive and silent, or vocal only as in the verses of Solomon and the songs of the Troubadours. “A man may be a good botanist,” said Rousseau, “although he does not know the name of a single plant.”The Easterns do not like to come empty-handed, and the commonest, as the fairest, flowers suffice. But it is not anosegayor abouquet, but aflowerthat they present. The leaf and stem are to them just as beautiful as the blossom; and a bundle of heads of flowers would appear to them much like a heap of human heads. In the numerous Chinese figures and ornaments that encumber our tables and rooms, it may be observed that, wherever there are flowers, they are single, each by itself in a vase. A piece of pottery has recently been brought to England from the Greek Islands: it is unique, and no description has been discovered of its uses. It is a vase about four inches in diameter, surrounded with two circles of very small vases, which stand out from it: it is evidently for flowers, and so placed that each should have its own stalk and vessel. The Moors also have a flower-dish for the room: the top in pierced pottery, so that each stands by itself. One of the things which in Europe have shamed me most in the presence of an Eastern is the bouquet, or painted cauliflower head, in the hand of a lady. Alas! that perversion of taste should always fasten on her fairest subjects!Their weeds, stunted in our hot-houses, are their chief embellishments; the cactus, for instance, and the aloe. Here the one bears flowers like a standard, and the other fruit like a flower. Without science, numbers of plants, or skill in rearing and combining delicate and diverse natures, a garden rises to something infinitely beyond our ideas, whether of use or grandeur. So may it be traced on the Nile in the palmy days of the Pharaohs, on the Xenil in those of the Abderachmans, no less than at Jerusalem and Babylon.The Hanging Gardens were the least like what a European would expect: the authenticity of the concurrent testimony of Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, and Josephus has consequently been questioned. There was no assortment like Kew—no show like Chiswick. Flowers are no more mentioned than cabbages or carrots.The land was intersected with canals, carrying water field by field over the Doab of the Tigris and Euphrates; beyond this region spread dead levels, which, as Xenophon says, resembled the sea. From the city’s lofty walls stretched on all sides, far as eye could reach, flatness and luxuriance. What, then, could taste divine and power accomplish—if not the rivalling of wild nature—to transport thither a primeval forest, and to pile up coctile mountains to place it on. Such was the design of the Hanging Gardens; and, when accomplished, doubtless they were a wonder.The forest-crowned battlements of Lucca, diminutive as they are, and in the midst of wood and mountains, nevertheless please the eye. A palm-tree on one of the towers of Arta often recurs to my memory as one of the most attractive and picturesque features of that lovely region. The sculptures of Nineveh present the same thing: on the towers of cities are planted palm and other trees, confirming the accounts of the Hanging Gardens. They afford, no doubt, protection; for, if not useful in time of war, they would have been cut down.[237]The walls of these ancient cities were broad enough to bear a forest band, and might have had a stream or river running along for their nourishment.In the gardens of Azarah[238]we have the same theme in a different mode. Around were mountains; these were all planted with fruit-trees and cultivated with flowers. The palace, as it were, walked forth into the garden, and its glory consisted in Mosaic walks, fountains, kiosks; and there, of course, in their excellence were to be seen those peculiarities of gardening we can still trace in Morocco and in Spain and Portugal, which I have already mentioned in describing Kitan and Ceuta, and which those who visit the Peninsula get some idea of by the fortress of Lisbon, and especially by the courts of the convent of Bellem, and—though travestied—in the Alcazar at Seville.We know more of the domestic manners of the Egyptians than of those of any people who have preceded us; and I should imagine that the pictured walls of the Memnons furnish the best delineation, however unsuccessful the Egyptians were in painting flowers, of what those gardens were[239]which the Saracens constructed in Spain, and how they arranged and assorted together verdure and architecture, flowers, trees, land, and water. In the Middle Ages, nothing more excited the wonder of Europe than the gardens of Andalusia; and that that exquisite gardening is of the highest antiquity is clear, from “heaven” in all languages being called “paradise.”[240]The Hesperides, the seats of the blessed, were orchards.[241]A garden being the abode of the dead, a tree came to be the symbol of death in that of life. On the sepulchral monuments, the tree of the Hesperides and the strigil are the most constant emblems—the one representing immortality, the other purity. At Nineveh, the tree of life is associated with the living, not the dead. As the sun set in the west, and as the west was considered to be the place to which the spirits repaired, their abode, Hezperi, came to mean the evening, or Hesperus. The site of the Hesperides can admit, therefore, of no doubt or ambiguity; and the name given to another part of Africa in the neighbourhood of Carthage can only be understood as figuratively expressing its excellences and beauty.Their gardens may still be described as copses of fruit-trees, as is naturally to be expected in the country of the orange, lemon, and citron, when flower, foliage, verdure, shade, and fruit were all combined—not evanescent in an hour, or exchanging their merits, but combined in one, and enduring nearly throughout the year. The orange, in a hot country, is the very excellence of fruit; and, if we were not familiarised with its form and flavour, the aspect of a Moorish garden of that description would prompt all that the same sight prompted to the Greeks of old.A peculiarity of their gardening is, that they do not mix the different kinds. The Jews were forbidden to mix the olive and the vine; and Solomon speaks of a garden of nuts (it should be almonds). This is the fashion here: the garden is a square—it is again laid out in squares, in the way that we dispose a farm for rotation crops. Thus, the gardens of the Sultan at Morocco are divided off into almonds, pomegranates, figs, pears, cherries. The square divisions are separated by alleys of the dimensions of streets, but some greater than others. Columns run along; and above these, and partly down the sides, there is a fret-work of bamboo; over these are trained vines, the clusters depending through the trellis (as seen in the Egyptian tombs). Jessamine (the large white and yellow flower) and other plants are trained up the columns, and festooned around them. Through these alleys you ride on horseback; and at the intersections there are vast halls, like that I have described at Kitan, of bamboo fret-work: the portals and openings imitate windows, and are twined and matted with various creepers.On both sides of the alleys flow the rivulets for irrigation; and, there being no weeds or under-verdure, you have the refreshing coolness without the effects of rank vegetation. The style of the private gardens is the same.Oranges and lemons are, however, classed by themselves. They are planted together, and in certain proportions, viz. the orange sweet and bitter, the lemon sweet and bitter, the citron large and small—in all, nearly a dozen varieties. A garden of this kind is calledquorce. The common orange has evidently been a graft from the East, for it is calledchin: inlimandrunghmay be found the root of our lemon and orange. To the eastward, the Arabs call the orangeBerdkou.Portugalis so called by the Greeks, &c.; and probably that general name which it has acquired in the Levant comes from the Portuguese traffic when they were in possession of the ports of Barbary.So recent is the introduction of these plants in the East, that I have been shown the stumps of the two trees first planted in the island now most celebrated for their growth, and where the gardens resemble those of Barbary, having the three varieties mixed together. This island is Naxos: the two trees are called Adam and Eve, and they say they were brought by the Venetians. That, of course, is a mistake, but it shows that they came from the West.Throughout the country the trees are generally evergreens—the olive, wild and cultivated, the cork, oak, the arar, the locust, the palm, the palmetto, the orange and lemon, the lotus and myrtle, and, finally, the Barbary fig and aloe, which give to the land its tropical and ideal character. The whole country is covered with what are our garden flowers; so that now, in the depth of winter, there is no sign of the hoary monarch save in the gardens, where the fruit-trees are naked; but these leafless copses did not suffice, under a glowing sun and with a verdant landscape, to cool, even in thought, the summer breath into a winter chill. They merely looked like withered trees, and the gardens were the only spots that did not smile. I speak of those that were scattered along our road, not of the septs of pale blue fantastic vegetation enclosing the dark shining groves ofquorce(orange and lemon) that grace the banks of the Lixus.It is not without reason that the cactus is called the Barbary fig. It grows so abundantly and luxuriantly, and is so well adapted to the soil and climate; flourishing in the arid sand, covering it with a grateful shade, fertilizing it with its thick succulent branches as they fall, fostering other plants by its shelter, and furnishing in abundance a healthy and refreshing crop of fruit, which fringes or studs its gigantic leaves.[242]The fig has a thick rind, which is pared off: this, in Spain, is treasured up for the pigs. Like the Turkey, the prickly pear, though cherished, is repudiated, every people calling it by the name of some other people: we call it Barbary fig, the Moors call it Christian fig—kermus ensare. The Spaniards call itTuna, as having been imported from Tunis; the Shillohs of Sus call itTacanarete, as if it had come to them from the Canary Islands. There is but one people who have boldly adopted it, and that is the Mexicans, who have taken it as their national emblem, and have associated it upon their coins with the shashea, or Barbary cap, intended to represent Liberty. It is doubtless from the word “karmus” that we have taken “kermes,”[243]the name of the insect growing upon it, and one variety of which furnishes the cochineal. The people of the Canary Islands call it “alcormas,”[244]which, in fact, is the kermus, the common term of the Arabs for fig. This, I think, suffices to vindicate the claims of Barbary to its prickly pear; for the people of the Canaries were driven from Africa at a remote period, and were of the race of the Shillohs, as their language, names, and customs, noted at the time of their discovery and conquest, can leave no doubt.The aloe bears no fruit: the stalk of the blossom serves for the purposes of light timber. It blossoms about the seventh year, and then dies: it rises from the seed that falls. They are not acquainted with the liquor, like soured milk (yourt), which the Mexicans draw from it (pulke) by tapping. The Moors do not convert its fibres into the same beautiful work as the Mexicans, or the inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago, but they use them for sewing. An Arab woman, when she has needlework, goes into the garden to gather her thread: the thread, like the plant, is called “gorsean.” I have been told that some of the very old lace made by the Jews is of this fibre.The kitchen-gardens surround every town like a suburb, and in them we have, no doubt, the “gardens of herbs” of the Jews. The distribution of land for a town under the Jewish system required a space sufficient for a garden for each household; and, beyond the ground so appropriated, there was the common land or pasturages. The same rule prevails here; and there is a common shepherd and cowherd who comes for the cattle in the morning and brings them home at night. The gardens are small squares, divided off internally with rows of tall reeds. There is a plank door with lintels; all the rest of the enclosure is of growing plants. The soil is generally sand: here in the gardens above the town, and through which I passed last night, it is nothing but sand, and its fertility depends on the shelter afforded it. The tall reeds fence it round; there is then a path on the four sides, on the inner side of the path fruit-trees; and the centre, between the trees and the path adjoining the reeds, is covered with a trellis, over which vines are trained. The smaller ones are without trees; so that, as you peep into them, they look like large rooms or corridors.They say that the smell of the cistus cools one: I fancied I experienced the same effect in looking at the mirage-like colours of the cactus and aloe. But what is to be said of their forms?—can anything be more antithetical than the straight lines and the sharp points and daggers of the aloe, and the distorted contorted lobes and projections of the prickly pear? Mingled together, as they generally are, they keep the mind occupied with their strangeness and their contrasts. More than once I have heard Europeans express themselves angrily about them, and revile their “monstrosities.” As seen in our hot-houses, the form may be known, but that is all; no idea can be formed of the cavern-like alley with which, when they rise fifteen or twenty feet, they cover the ground. The aloe is the outer fence, orchevaux-de-frise, the cactus rising higher within: through these are mingled the tall slender reeds, as if to unite in one bond the three most dissimilar things in nature. Together, they form a fence which might delay an army, and present to the archer Phœbus a testudo which defies his shafts.On the coast, the heat is tempered by the sea-breezes at the hottest times of the year and day; but the influence of these winds is lost as they pass inwards, and in three or four miles they become themselves heated. Along the Zahel their cooling breath is expended on the barren sand. Here the sands cease and the rich soil commences. There is no languid autumn and benumbing winter, no trying spring or scorching summer, but unceasing verdure and ever-springing plants.To the south fertility is wanting; to the north there are the heavy vapours of the easterly wind. Sheltered from the blasts of the sea, though inhaling its health and freshness, and from the damp wind that sweeps through the Gut of Gibraltar and infects the shores of Spain and Morocco,—this region enjoys the richest soil, the most fortunate site in a clime where barren sand upon a mountain-top can bear the choicest fruits and the fairest flowers; a clime which combines the charms of every other, and preserves throughout the year the luxury of every season.This climate is adapted to pulmonary invalids. During the latter days of November, the whole of December, and the half of January, we have had but three bad days: there has been but one day not splendid during our excursion. The want of trees along the coast—whatever the effect in summer—leaves in winter no masses of decomposed leaves to affect the air. The trees, where abundant, are evergreens; and the vines had not lost their leaves, which were coloured a deep red. The new figs were formed, and some of them as large as walnuts; the flowers were all in blossom; and, though it was cold at night, it was hot during the day. We have here the latitude of Madeira, without the exposure to its storms or sudden changes; nor does the barometer fluctuate even in storms. It has not fallen below “change.” I have seen pulmonary diseases, but it has been in the Jewish quarter, where they live in blocks of houses with the passage for the air below; sleeping on the floor, or even below the level of the court, twenty sometimes in a room, and with barrels of fermenting raisins in every house, from which they distil their spirits. Except under such circumstances, I have observed no trace of affection of the lungs; and, to all these advantages for a pulmonary patient, there would be added the bath.[224]The Spaniards occupied Larache under PhilipII., and lost it under PhilipIII.(1689).[225]It has since occurred to me that they might have been baths.[226]TheRuscus aculeatus. It is the plant which the Spaniards prefer for adorning their patios, or courts; but in Spain the growth is not so luxuriant.[227]At the moment that I discovered this trace of Pharaotic sculpture, I was struck with the attitude of the men around me. The Moors do not squat down like the Easterns, tailor-fashion, but they sit with their knees up, and on them rest their arms; and shrouded in their Gilabras, they are exactly like the sitting figures of Egypt.[228]The Phœnician coins found in this neighbourhood, or in Spain, present the originals of the whole of the mythology and the arts of Greece. The plates to Don Bathagin’s (infant of Spain) edition of Sallust’s Jugurtha alone present the following list.Laurel crowns. Ivy crown, with the bunch-like grapes. Ceres crown of corn-heads. The Mural crown. The star and crescent. The trident and dolphin. The sun and the sun and moon. Winged Pegasus. The palm-tree. The palm, lion, and the horse’s head. The Zampti, represented by four columns surmounted by a pediment. The winged Cupid and the winged Genius. The Genius and torch. The diadem and circlet. The helm and galley beak.The art of coining they borrowed from the Greeks, and it seems to have been the only mention of that people; but the emblems represented were the ancient ones.The mythological terms and names of Greece, in like manner may be cited.Æolus, עעול,aol, storm.Elysium fields, עליז,aliz, happy.Erebus, the west, as used by Homer,Odyss.μʹ 12. Chaos, כהות ערב,chaüth ereb, evening darkness.Myth, מות,muth, death.Pan, פן,pan, “attonitus stupet.”Thyrsus, תרזה,thyrza, pines.Phallus, פלצות,phallasuth.Orgy, רזא,rza, wrath.Mystery,mistur, a thing hidden, Landseer.Siren, שיר,sir, to sing.Hero, חורים,horim, princes (Eccl. x.17).Hades, חדס,hades, orhadasso, myrtle, whence Edessa, &c.Satyr,satur, disguised.Faun, פנים,phanim, a masque.Tartarus,tara, warning (redoubled).Cyclops,chem slub, lay of Selab (Chon.l. i. c.80).Hephæstos,abfather,affire, whence also Vesta, usta, &c.Persephone,perifruit,sophonlost.Triptolemus,taropbreak,telearth,telensfurrow.Golden apples,μήλα, golden fleece,μάλλον,malh, riches.Toison (French),tsonsheep.[229]The most desperate sea-fight ever known. The whole of the vanquished fleet was destroyed, and if I recollect right, only three of the victors escaped.[230]“Jam nunc Emporiæ duo oppida erant muro divisa: unum Græci habebant a Phocæa unde et Massilienses oriundi, alterum Hispani.”—Livy.[231]“Emporia vocant eam regionem ... una civitas ejus Liptis.”—Livyl.34.[232]Carthage when it fell, was the richest, the most peopled, and strongest city in the world. It had seventy thousand citizens, and three hundred cities in Africa.[233]Ὅσα γέγραπται πολίσματα καὶ ἐμπόρια ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ.[234]“Viro latine loquens, ad illa multum imperatore rubesceret.”—Spartianus.[235]“Ejus civitates lingua modo conversa connubio Numidarum.”[236]“Inelegant as they may appear to the cultivated taste of an Englishman, they afford a voluptuous noon-tide retreat to the languid traveller. Even he, whose imagination can recall the enchanting scenery of Richmond or of Stowe, may perhaps experience new pleasure in viewing the glistening pomegranates in full blossom. Revived by the freshening breeze, the purling of the brooks, and the verdure of the groves, his ear will catch the melody of the nightingale, delightful beyond what is heard in England; with conscious gratitude to heaven, he will recline on the simple mat, bless the hospitable shelter, and perhaps, while indulging the pensive mood, he will hardly regret the absence of British refinement in gardening.”—Dr. Russell.[237]Layard’s Nineveh,vol. ii. p.393.[238]These gardens have been the occasion of preserving a trait of Moorish character: an old woman having had a portion of ground taken from her to complete the enclosure, appealed to the caïd,—“The magistrate mounted his ass, taking with him a sack of enormous size, and presented himself before Hisham, who happened to be then sitting in a pavilion on the very ground belonging to the old woman. The arrival of the caïd, still more the sack, which he carried on his shoulders, surprised the caliph. Ibn Bechir having prostrated himself, entreated the monarch to allow him to fill his sack with some of the earth on which they then were. The request was granted, and when the sack was full, the caïd desired his master to help him to lift it on his ass. This strange demand astonished Alkakem still more, and he told the caïd that the load was too heavy. 'O prince,’ replied Ibn Bechir, 'this sack which you find too heavy, contains but a very small portion of the earth which you have unjustly taken from a poor woman; how then at the day of judgment shall you bear the weight of the whole?’”[239]The valley of Jordan was like the garden of Eden and the land of Egypt.—Gen. xiii.10.[240]“The Assyrians were probably also the inventors of the parks or paradises which were afterwards maintained with so much sumptuousness by the Persian kings of the Archimedian and Sassanian dynasties. In these spacious preserves various kinds of wild animals were continually kept for the diversion of the king, and for those who were privileged to join with him in the chase. These paradises were stocked, not only with some of every kind, but with various trees, shrubs, and plants; and were watered by numerous artificial streams. The Persian word has passed into various languages, and is used for the first abode of man before his fall, as well as for the state of eternal happiness.”—Layard’sNineveh,vol. ii. p.432.[241]עז פריhez peri, fruit-tree.[242]The leaf, besides, is one of their great specifics in medicine; it is used for hæmorroids. It is applied as a cataplasm for every kind of external disorders, and even to the buboes of the plague. The thick leaf is roasted in the oven, and then laid on hot.[243]We have borrowed from them many other words.Botany, frombatmore, turpentine-tree.Herb,erbie, which signifies not only plants, but their season of appearance.Wood,wood.Lozenge,loze, almond, whence also Lusitania.Bane, as in henbane.Wort, as in colewort, fromwurde, rose; whence also “order,” the rose being the emblem of the order, whence, “under the rose.”Lupin, signifies bean.Artichoke,korshof.Flower,flour, cauliflower.Dalia, this is their word for vine.Cabbage; they call a bunch of vegetables as brought to the market,habba, from it a portion may besnipped.Truffle, their name isterfez.[244]Vide vocabulary in Glass’s History of the Canary Islands.

We very soon came upon another lake which has no regular opening to the sea, though the bank of sand is occasionally moved. It must have been here that Don Sebastian projected making the entrance for his internal harbour; but the lake with which this entrance communicates is of small extent, apparently of no great depth, and separated from the long lake by a neck of land of no great elevation, but which from its sandy nature it would be a great enterprise to cut through. We passed over a good deal of flat ground, like Hungary, completely under cultivation, and the fields perfectly clean: the douars had the look of villages, and we could scarcely believe that there were not built houses amongst them.

Towards evening we came upon a country of a new aspect—broken ground, aluminous shale, covered with a straggling oak forest. Herds of cattle were pointed out to us, which were said to be turned out there to multiply without the care of man; and we came upon a douar in the midst of this forest, where I was very much tempted to bivouac for the night. It was like a scene in one of the wooded vales of Western Greece: however, we pushed on for Larache, the gardens of which we entered long after it was pitch-dark. The road between them was sand: there was no possibility of getting water either by fountain, stream, or well—such is the site of the Gardens of the Hesperides! I had to postpone the satisfaction of my curiosity till the morrow’s light, and entered the capital of the King of the Giants with that sort of reverence and awe which I had felt in approaching the ruins of Stonehenge.

We were led through a labyrinth of strange and precipitous streets, till we came down to the lower wall on the side of the harbour: the houses looked like the little tombs at Pompeii by the wayside. We were received by the English Consular Agent, a Genoese, whom, notwithstanding his European habiliments, we might have taken for a Moor by his quiet demeanour, and his unobtrusive attention to all our wants. A scene rose next morning such as deserved to shine on the groves of the Danaïdes. Before one sweeps with many a bend the stream, on whose tranquil breast reposes the wreck of the navy of Morocco—a corvette, two brigs, and a schooner. A high bank of sand shuts out the sea, save at the narrow bar. In front of the town a verdant plain is spread; all round it flows the river, and beyond it rises an amphitheatre of broken hills of a lively mountain aspect, and with other forms and other colours than those of the Zahel. Over these were scattered gardens; but the gardens of Morocco, which, unlike those of any other land, are embellished by the bank of cactus, that serves them for a wall, and painted with the leaden green of the aloe.

To the east, and opposite the sea entrance, there is a detached hill, like that upon which are situated the ruins of Epidaurus, a spot which must be ever green in the memory of travellers in Greece. Considering this to be a last chance of finding a Phœnician city, I commenced inquiries, and was told that the hill was covered with ruins which had been deserted from the memory of man, and that the hill was calledShemish. I at once determined to delay my journey in order to devise means to visit it. This was no easy matter, and I thought the best plan was to try and get into a boat without my guards, and then trust to chance and perseverance for being able to push on.

Having no suspicion, they allowed me to get into a boat, accompanied by a soldier of the town. We embarked at a jetty, close to which lay in tier in a strong tide-way, four tolerably-sized European vessels, laden with corn, bark and wool, waiting for an opportunity of getting over the bar. We kept close to the bank of sand thrown up by the sea, behind which lay the dismantled and perishing vessels I have already mentioned. The water was much discoloured; and, like that of the Seboo, bore traces of chalk. I observed something white on the bank: pulling to the spot, I found it really to be chalk, an outlyer standing on its edge. It was harder than the common chalk of England. The flints were large masses, and there was a coating on them of crystals of carbonate of lime. The masses of flints were evidently the same as those which had become gasule. Close by there was a hill like an artificial mound, and on it the regular sheep-walks of our chalk ranges. Under it we landed, as it adjoined Shemish and was connected with it by a low neck. The rocky eminence of Shemish is sandstone, not that which encrusts the Zahel, but a compact and ancient rock, and sometimes approaching to granular quartz.

From the top of Shemish the prospect is striking, from the extraordinary windings of the river to the south and east: it turns back upon itself, more like the windings of a serpent than the meanderings of a stream. Hence it derives its name ofElcos, or the boa; hence, too, the fable of the dragon. There was no fable in the guardianship. The protection was not in his folds, but in his foaming head—the bar that closed the entrance.

In Pliny’s time the little plain was only partially formed. “At thirty-two thousand paces from this place (Tangier) is Lixos, of which the ancients relate so many fables, and which was made a colony by the cruelty of Claudius Cæsar. There was the kingdom of Anteus; there his strife with Hercules; there the gardens of the Hesperides. An estuary, with a meandering course, communicates with the sea, over which the dragon is said to have kept watch: an island is embraced within the curves of the water, which, though but slightly raised above the surrounding land, is never covered by the tide. There is a temple to Hercules, and some wild olives that are found there are all that remain of its groves, said to bear golden fruit.”

He then proceeds to speak of the “portentosa mendacia” of the Greeks in respect to this site; and it reminded me of the “quicquid Græcia mendax audet in historia” of Juvenal, speaking of the canal of Xerxes, which, disbelieved by the Roman satirist, may be seen and traced at this hour. So, in like manner, the golden fruit of Lixos blossoms and ripens to this day, despite the incredulity of the Roman naturalist.

These ruins have not been hitherto described; they will soon be demolished. Walls which, I was told, had been some years ago continuous, and much higher than at present, surround the crest of an irregular hill: the circuit may be three miles. Where I first came upon them I found walls in tapia and mortar, and stones, having entirely the Moorish character. I began to apprehend the repetition of the disappointment I had so often experienced.

The rolled fragments of stone and lime would not alone do. I wanted some chiselling, and something to resemble the bulwarks which Nonnus tells us Cadmus (i. e.the Phœnician) gave to the hundred cities he planted in thisborder:—-

δῶκ’ δ’ ἑκαστῇΔύσβατα λαϊνέοις ὑψούμενα τείχεα πύργοις.

δῶκ’ δ’ ἑκαστῇΔύσβατα λαϊνέοις ὑψούμενα τείχεα πύργοις.

δῶκ’ δ’ ἑκαστῇ

Δύσβατα λαϊνέοις ὑψούμενα τείχεα πύργοις.

And I did come on evidences indisputable. These were hewn stone, neither Roman, Hellenic, nor Cyclopic. They were large, not in regular tiers, nor polygonal, and joined with cement. One stone which I measured was ten feet by three. The angles were thus constructed. The walls were in rude work of stone and lime, which, but for the connexion in which I found them, might have passed for recent. They exactly resemble the ruins which are called “Old Tangier.”

I now at length did see a Phœnician wall, and knew what it was. On the summit of the hill a more ancient building seems to have been converted into a magazine:[224]it is roofed in and terraced over. Near it there is the circular end of a building, standing about twenty feet in height and thirty in diameter. There were long, vaulted chambers, in pairs, like congreve locks, arched and double, twenty feet long, six feet wide, and twelve feet high. They were scattered all over the place, within the walls and without. I went into nine or ten of them. There was no mark of water on the sides. I hardly think they could have been cisterns. I could not imagine to what use they were destined.[225]This was all I could make out by scrambling through the thick brushwood for the greater portion of the day.

The emblem of peace is busily engaged in upturning these precious remains. The branches of the wild olive are rounded like the oak, and do not, like those of the grafted tree, adjust themselves to the form of the buildings in which they have struck root, as in the ruins of Greece and Italy. They are here thickly planted, and their roots and branches are so many wedges driven into the walls. I observed a stone, which could not be under ten tons, lifted up from the top of a wall, between the branches of a tree, which again was yielding under its weight. It reminded me of the admired, but false, metaphor of Lamartine, when he compares the heart, early love-stricken, to a tree that bears aloft the hatchet-head, which had been buried in its stem.

The rock was covered with a variety of plants, which would have presented a rich harvest to a botanist: I can notice but some belonging to the times of old. Hesperus, fresh leaping from the ocean, here found in every season all flowers for his wreath; the lotus, the myrtle, and the palm; the pine, the arar, which represents the cypress. The acanthus covered the ground with its deep green, glossy, and spreading leaves. The ivy, instead of crawling over stones or trunks, spreads over the boughs of trees, and hangs in festoons between them, with a thin cord-like stem, and delicate leaves studding it upon either side. The berries are in clusters, like diminutive bunches of grapes, and the image of the vine is completed by spiral tendrils. I now saw why it was that the ivy had been appropriated to Bacchus; it was the image of the vine fitted for a crown. I took one of its long shoots, and wreathed it into a chaplet, and placed it on the head of one of the wine-denying Moors, a boatman who had accompanied me, and he was no less delighted at the implied courtesy than I at the real beauty of the object.

Perhaps, however, the connexion of the ivy and Bacchus may be no more than a pun. To him were consecrated a plant and a bird, and both had the same name,κίσσαandκίσσος, the magpie and the ivy. Bochart makes out the proper name of Bacchus to have been nearly the same, and himself the chief of the first of the wine-growing countries, the founder of an empire which conquered India, and which has left behind monuments to substantiate any fable which Greek fancy could create. In fact, Bacchus is no other than Chus, orBar Chusii, whom we call Nimrod, and the Greeks Nebrodes, being a great hunter, and therefore painted with the skins of wild animals—chiefly the tiger, ornimra—the spoils of which cover the shoulders of Bacchus, while the captive animal is yoked to his car.

The crown for the festivities of Apollo, I now saw was neither our laurel nor the bay, the branches of which never could have been used for such a purpose, as any gem or statue will show. At Shemish a plant luxuriates which possesses all the qualities requisite for this ornament. It is a bush, standing four or five feet high, which sends up yearly twigs, round, smooth, green, and pliant. The leaves are set along it alternately, and these are soft, glossy, delicate in texture and elegant in form, and yet of extraordinary durability; and the twigs are just the length required for a chaplet: a red berry hangs to the leaf by a fine thread, while simultaneously it bears the flower, which is a small star of six fleshy points, of the palest green, with an amethyst cup in the centre.[226]

The tree of Minerva, in all its stubborn and unsubjugated vigour, here flourishes in scorn on Neptune’s border, and the oak of Jupiter, presenting food for man, completes the assemblage of these leafy reminiscences of time gone by, veiling the grey ruins that the elements had not yet destroyed, nor man laid low. Here were the things of Nature, which they in their time admired, leaf for leaf, and line for line; bright, gay, verdant, with their shining dewdrops, and their buzzing insects; and there, after thirty centuries, lay the stones they had chiselled, and the mortar they had mixed. The air of such a place breathes of nepenthes,—the poppy of memory, not forgetfulness. It is covered with a mirage of recollections, on which the spirit floats, and with which it mingles. Its solitude invited the busy throng of other times. There was the work of their hands, the place of their choice, the field of their labour, the haven of their traffic. There the horizon they looked upon; the plants they gathered, the trees they cultivated, the sun that awoke the wind that refreshed them. I saw them in the choice they had made, and lived amongst them, in seeing what they saw, and feeling as they felt. As an angel that has conversed with man, they have taken their flight—they have disappeared, as if, like the sun, to visit other climes. Their western-bound prows, perchance, followed his course, flying from the Chaldean or the Macedonian; their last glances may have rested on this height, where I first beheld walls which their hands had reared. Or this might have been the end of their pilgrimage. They were beyond the reach of the conqueror and Libya, which had offered an asylum to the fugitives of Jericho, and Moab might have yielded one also to those of Tyre.

I had been astonished at finding no fragment whatever of marble. I cannot say but that this raised some doubt in my mind; but on getting down to the bank of the river, to the southward, I came uponnine lime-kilns. There was a little commerce established, a landing-place for the boats, and large sugar-casks for the lime. They have now exhausted the quarry. The quantity extracted must have been immense, for they have been at work for two years. The contents of one kiln had been drawn out, and they were about to slake them. I pulled out entire one morsel, which resembled the front part of the Egyptian Pshent.[227]The lime is used for a new palace of the Caïd, for government stores, and the repairs of the batteries, suggested by the French bombardment.

Thus have been disposed of relics that might have thrown light on the early history of this portion of the world, and supplied in some degree the loss of the libraries of Carthage and Alexandria. To add to the provocation, close by they had an inexhaustible store of material, more easily calcinable, had they but known. I have been informed, however, that it was with the purpose of destroying an object of interest to Europeans that the order was sent. If so, this is one of the effects of thejournéeordéjeûnerof Isly.

“Sit ne aliqua super spes,”exclaims Eckhel,“fore ut plus lucis his Phœniciorum reliquiis adfundatur? Aio superesse exiguam nisi ex terræ sinu proferantur monumenta copiosiora.”How many, alas! since he wrote have been plastered into walls. Strange fate, that of these explorers of the land and sea—these instructors in all art and science—every trace should have disappeared! There remains no shred of their tissues, no tint of their dyes, no limb of their statues, no corner of their palaces, no stone of their temples: no annalist has noted for us their facts; no epic has been built up from their story; no Sophocles replaced their heroes on a mimic stage; no Pindar prolonged the echo of their chariot wheels.

But though until I visited this place I did not know even where to go to look for a wall of this construction, from the scanty fragments that have been gleaned we learn, that all that Greece and Rome could boast are nothing more than monuments oftheirgreatness,[228]and of a greatness in which they have no compeers. All other dominations have extinguished what it overshadowed, and devoured what it covered.

Is not this the interpretation of the fable of the Phœnix?—a bird perishing in fire; a new life springing from its ashes. It was not the procreation of the breed; it was not the colonies that had gone forth from its loins. The parentage was spiritual, and the type revived in new matter. There was but one Phœnix. There has been but one Phœnicia, and all that we have of light and letters to this day has come from her. Her name, that of a bird, and a tree—the palm of Judæa, and the wings of her sea-faring sons.

It occurred to me that Larache, as the city of Antæus and the giants, must have been that belonging to the original population, and Shemish the Phœnician settlement. This would explain that remarkable expression, “Libo-Phœnician cities.” It was not Phœnician or Carthaginian territory: it was theircities. It was not their cities among an uncultivated people; the Libyans had cities too. The cities of both were linked together, and here they were. Nor is it at this place alone. At Tangier it is precisely the same: the old city, which now I know to be Phœnician, is on the opposite side of the bay. At Arzela there are ruins of the same kind across the river; at Dar el Baida they are on the neighbouring headland. The still existing cities I, of course, take to be the original ones. They are in couples: in none of these cases could the one have supplanted the other. They owe their conjoint existence to the peculiar nature of the Phœnician settlements: they lived together, each requiring his own establishment, but neither encroaching on or displacing the other.

Carthage, in the height of her power, paid ground-rent. It was not till the latter time, and in her struggles with Rome, that she sought to govern and possess, according to our present notions; and it was in Sicily and Spain that she set her hands to this craft, and brought down her own ruin.

The greatness of Carthage was founded on the confidence that the native population had in her integrity.Punica fidescould not have been turned to a reproach, had it not at first represented a truth. Had she, like the English or the French, the Spaniards or the Portuguese, been even suspected of being a grasping power, she must either have become mistress of Mauritania, or been expelled from its border, or shut up in useless rocks upon its coast; and the word “Libo-Phœnician cities” would never have descended to our time.

We are without any direct and positive information respecting the internal management, or the external relations of those cities, or their ties with the parent state; but a city, in every respect similarly situated, has been described by ancient authors, in a sufficiently distinct manner to put what I have said on more secure grounds than that of mere reference. The city I refer to is Emporiæ, one of the great settlements of Spain; the only one, then, not Phœnician, but founded by that branch of the Ionic Greeks which drew nearest to them in character and enterprise, and with whom alone of the Greeks they had made friendship on the field of battle.[229]It was the counterpart in Iberia of Marseilles in Gaul, and completed the range of Phocæan traffic. It was exactly what the Libo-Phœnician cities were, as its name alone suffices to show; for Emporion is not, as is supposed, a Greek, but a Phœnician word, and all these cities had the generic name of Emporiæ, having their proper name besides.

Like Tyre, Emporiæ was originally on an island: on being abandoned, it was called in like mannerPalæopolis. The colonists then joined with the Hispani in the same town, which seems to have been called Indica; the tribe was called Indigetes. They were received as guests, and allowed to join their city to that of the Hispani:[230]it was thence calledDispolis. The part belonging to the Greeks looked to the sea, the other to the land: the first was four hundred paces in circuit, the second three thousand. Each people preserved its laws and customs. Intercourse, except for purposes of commerce, was forbidden; and thence, according to Livy, no dispute ever arose to interrupt the harmony of their neighbourhood during the ages of this common habitation. So unwearied was the watchfulness of the Greeks, that one-third of the male population nightly mounted guard.

This vigilance—the striking contrast between those really living communities and our heaps of sand—was not peculiar to the Phocæans; nor was the disposition to grant sites for cities, and the privileges of self-government to settlers, peculiar to the Indigetes. Here is a picture of the times; and, with such modifications as circumstances cast over the delineation, we see all the other Emporia on the coasts of Libya or Iberia.

I have said that Emporion was not a Greek word. The Chaldæan paraphrase (Genesisxxv.3) hasEmporiusfor merchants,Emporiothfor merchandise. Leptis is mentioned, both as one of the Emporia and one of the Lybo-Phœnician cities.[231]Livy says that Scipio spent his time between the “PunicaEmporia gentemque Garamantum.” He went now to visit the natives, now the commercial establishments, which, instead of bolts, had fortresses for their defence.

Scylax couples the cities and Emporia. “The Carthaginians,” says he, “spread from the Syrtes to the Columns of Hercules.” The words are singular, and seem to mark a difficulty of expression, such as occurs when describing habits so foreign: cities along a coast, forming a nation and government apart—an empire, as it were, standing on points.[232]

But so far from theπολίσματα[233]and the Emporia subjugating the native population centuries afterwards, and when the Roman sword had been thrown into the scale with the Tyrian trinkets, it was not the city that overspread the plain with its shadow, but the people of the wilderness that had assimilated to themselves the urban system, defying alike the imperial power and the metropolitan civilization.

Severus, on attaining the imperial purple, sent for his sister fromLeptis, and was much ashamed of her that she could scarcely speak Latin.[234]Was it, then, Phœnician she spoke?—not at all. Sallust has told us, in his time, that the language was changed byintermarriages with the Numidians.[235]

Was it a disadvantage to Rome that there was no uniformity? Had Rome been possessed with the mania of uniformity, she could at best have remained only a small state on the Tiber.

The Carthaginians kept their cities distinct from the cities of the Lybians: the Romans kept their laws distinct from the customs of the country. Rome could evenuniteprovinces, strange as it may seem with our experience, without convulsing them or throwing them into rebellion, for the union was judicial, not administrative or legislative. This reserve, which was the secret of the power of Carthage, became the source of the prosperity and tranquillity of Roman Mauritania, amidst the convulsions of the rest of the empire down to the invasion of the barbarians, which—in Africa at least—were uninvited by the provincials.

THE HESPERIDES.

A garden is not hot-houses to force fruits, or conservatories to preserve flowers: it is forest and fountain, affording shade and water; to these you mayaddflowers and fruits. An Eastern goes to his garden to enjoy nature, not to study art[236]—goes to it for shelter in the sultry hours, or to regale himself in the even-tide. Thus says Solomon:—“A garden enclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. I am come into my garden, I have eaten my honeycomb, and have drunk my wine and my milk.”

The world began with a garden. Of the first one, it is said, “the Lord planted it.” The botanist, who considered that the greatest compliment ever paid to his science was, when Christ said, “Consider the lilies of the field,” must have forgotten the workmanship of the first of orchards, for it was trees which constituted that garden. “Every tree that is pleasant to the sight or good for food,” and immediately after there are the rivers enumerated that spring in it. The garden was the first special work of Providence: it was the habitation appointed for our undefiled nature. Its culture was the first task allotted to man,—and it is sometimes the last, when all that life can yield or fortune bestow has been tried and exhausted. Tamerlane, when he had conquered the world, turned gardener at Samarkand.

They can fit up any place into a garden. I have spent an evening amongst a bed of leeks, which had suddenly assumed all the pretensions of a parterre and kiosk; a few plants to lay the cushions and carpets on, a couple of glass balls for the lights, a little tin wheel, on which a jet of water was conducted, some jessamine plants detached from a wall to form a canopy over our heads, the leeks pulled up in front to open a way for the supper. This kind of garden is a sort of out-of-door existence, and essentially belonging to a people with tents, and has its conveniences and luxuries adapted for transport.

There is no botany, no horticulture; their taste is ignorant. Their love of flowers is not as they are arranged in classes, multiplied in leaves, or varied in colours—it is for themselves—their natural forms, their pure colours, and their sweet odours. It is unobtrusive and silent, or vocal only as in the verses of Solomon and the songs of the Troubadours. “A man may be a good botanist,” said Rousseau, “although he does not know the name of a single plant.”

The Easterns do not like to come empty-handed, and the commonest, as the fairest, flowers suffice. But it is not anosegayor abouquet, but aflowerthat they present. The leaf and stem are to them just as beautiful as the blossom; and a bundle of heads of flowers would appear to them much like a heap of human heads. In the numerous Chinese figures and ornaments that encumber our tables and rooms, it may be observed that, wherever there are flowers, they are single, each by itself in a vase. A piece of pottery has recently been brought to England from the Greek Islands: it is unique, and no description has been discovered of its uses. It is a vase about four inches in diameter, surrounded with two circles of very small vases, which stand out from it: it is evidently for flowers, and so placed that each should have its own stalk and vessel. The Moors also have a flower-dish for the room: the top in pierced pottery, so that each stands by itself. One of the things which in Europe have shamed me most in the presence of an Eastern is the bouquet, or painted cauliflower head, in the hand of a lady. Alas! that perversion of taste should always fasten on her fairest subjects!

Their weeds, stunted in our hot-houses, are their chief embellishments; the cactus, for instance, and the aloe. Here the one bears flowers like a standard, and the other fruit like a flower. Without science, numbers of plants, or skill in rearing and combining delicate and diverse natures, a garden rises to something infinitely beyond our ideas, whether of use or grandeur. So may it be traced on the Nile in the palmy days of the Pharaohs, on the Xenil in those of the Abderachmans, no less than at Jerusalem and Babylon.

The Hanging Gardens were the least like what a European would expect: the authenticity of the concurrent testimony of Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, and Josephus has consequently been questioned. There was no assortment like Kew—no show like Chiswick. Flowers are no more mentioned than cabbages or carrots.

The land was intersected with canals, carrying water field by field over the Doab of the Tigris and Euphrates; beyond this region spread dead levels, which, as Xenophon says, resembled the sea. From the city’s lofty walls stretched on all sides, far as eye could reach, flatness and luxuriance. What, then, could taste divine and power accomplish—if not the rivalling of wild nature—to transport thither a primeval forest, and to pile up coctile mountains to place it on. Such was the design of the Hanging Gardens; and, when accomplished, doubtless they were a wonder.

The forest-crowned battlements of Lucca, diminutive as they are, and in the midst of wood and mountains, nevertheless please the eye. A palm-tree on one of the towers of Arta often recurs to my memory as one of the most attractive and picturesque features of that lovely region. The sculptures of Nineveh present the same thing: on the towers of cities are planted palm and other trees, confirming the accounts of the Hanging Gardens. They afford, no doubt, protection; for, if not useful in time of war, they would have been cut down.[237]The walls of these ancient cities were broad enough to bear a forest band, and might have had a stream or river running along for their nourishment.

In the gardens of Azarah[238]we have the same theme in a different mode. Around were mountains; these were all planted with fruit-trees and cultivated with flowers. The palace, as it were, walked forth into the garden, and its glory consisted in Mosaic walks, fountains, kiosks; and there, of course, in their excellence were to be seen those peculiarities of gardening we can still trace in Morocco and in Spain and Portugal, which I have already mentioned in describing Kitan and Ceuta, and which those who visit the Peninsula get some idea of by the fortress of Lisbon, and especially by the courts of the convent of Bellem, and—though travestied—in the Alcazar at Seville.

We know more of the domestic manners of the Egyptians than of those of any people who have preceded us; and I should imagine that the pictured walls of the Memnons furnish the best delineation, however unsuccessful the Egyptians were in painting flowers, of what those gardens were[239]which the Saracens constructed in Spain, and how they arranged and assorted together verdure and architecture, flowers, trees, land, and water. In the Middle Ages, nothing more excited the wonder of Europe than the gardens of Andalusia; and that that exquisite gardening is of the highest antiquity is clear, from “heaven” in all languages being called “paradise.”[240]

The Hesperides, the seats of the blessed, were orchards.[241]A garden being the abode of the dead, a tree came to be the symbol of death in that of life. On the sepulchral monuments, the tree of the Hesperides and the strigil are the most constant emblems—the one representing immortality, the other purity. At Nineveh, the tree of life is associated with the living, not the dead. As the sun set in the west, and as the west was considered to be the place to which the spirits repaired, their abode, Hezperi, came to mean the evening, or Hesperus. The site of the Hesperides can admit, therefore, of no doubt or ambiguity; and the name given to another part of Africa in the neighbourhood of Carthage can only be understood as figuratively expressing its excellences and beauty.

Their gardens may still be described as copses of fruit-trees, as is naturally to be expected in the country of the orange, lemon, and citron, when flower, foliage, verdure, shade, and fruit were all combined—not evanescent in an hour, or exchanging their merits, but combined in one, and enduring nearly throughout the year. The orange, in a hot country, is the very excellence of fruit; and, if we were not familiarised with its form and flavour, the aspect of a Moorish garden of that description would prompt all that the same sight prompted to the Greeks of old.

A peculiarity of their gardening is, that they do not mix the different kinds. The Jews were forbidden to mix the olive and the vine; and Solomon speaks of a garden of nuts (it should be almonds). This is the fashion here: the garden is a square—it is again laid out in squares, in the way that we dispose a farm for rotation crops. Thus, the gardens of the Sultan at Morocco are divided off into almonds, pomegranates, figs, pears, cherries. The square divisions are separated by alleys of the dimensions of streets, but some greater than others. Columns run along; and above these, and partly down the sides, there is a fret-work of bamboo; over these are trained vines, the clusters depending through the trellis (as seen in the Egyptian tombs). Jessamine (the large white and yellow flower) and other plants are trained up the columns, and festooned around them. Through these alleys you ride on horseback; and at the intersections there are vast halls, like that I have described at Kitan, of bamboo fret-work: the portals and openings imitate windows, and are twined and matted with various creepers.

On both sides of the alleys flow the rivulets for irrigation; and, there being no weeds or under-verdure, you have the refreshing coolness without the effects of rank vegetation. The style of the private gardens is the same.

Oranges and lemons are, however, classed by themselves. They are planted together, and in certain proportions, viz. the orange sweet and bitter, the lemon sweet and bitter, the citron large and small—in all, nearly a dozen varieties. A garden of this kind is calledquorce. The common orange has evidently been a graft from the East, for it is calledchin: inlimandrunghmay be found the root of our lemon and orange. To the eastward, the Arabs call the orangeBerdkou.Portugalis so called by the Greeks, &c.; and probably that general name which it has acquired in the Levant comes from the Portuguese traffic when they were in possession of the ports of Barbary.

So recent is the introduction of these plants in the East, that I have been shown the stumps of the two trees first planted in the island now most celebrated for their growth, and where the gardens resemble those of Barbary, having the three varieties mixed together. This island is Naxos: the two trees are called Adam and Eve, and they say they were brought by the Venetians. That, of course, is a mistake, but it shows that they came from the West.

Throughout the country the trees are generally evergreens—the olive, wild and cultivated, the cork, oak, the arar, the locust, the palm, the palmetto, the orange and lemon, the lotus and myrtle, and, finally, the Barbary fig and aloe, which give to the land its tropical and ideal character. The whole country is covered with what are our garden flowers; so that now, in the depth of winter, there is no sign of the hoary monarch save in the gardens, where the fruit-trees are naked; but these leafless copses did not suffice, under a glowing sun and with a verdant landscape, to cool, even in thought, the summer breath into a winter chill. They merely looked like withered trees, and the gardens were the only spots that did not smile. I speak of those that were scattered along our road, not of the septs of pale blue fantastic vegetation enclosing the dark shining groves ofquorce(orange and lemon) that grace the banks of the Lixus.

It is not without reason that the cactus is called the Barbary fig. It grows so abundantly and luxuriantly, and is so well adapted to the soil and climate; flourishing in the arid sand, covering it with a grateful shade, fertilizing it with its thick succulent branches as they fall, fostering other plants by its shelter, and furnishing in abundance a healthy and refreshing crop of fruit, which fringes or studs its gigantic leaves.[242]The fig has a thick rind, which is pared off: this, in Spain, is treasured up for the pigs. Like the Turkey, the prickly pear, though cherished, is repudiated, every people calling it by the name of some other people: we call it Barbary fig, the Moors call it Christian fig—kermus ensare. The Spaniards call itTuna, as having been imported from Tunis; the Shillohs of Sus call itTacanarete, as if it had come to them from the Canary Islands. There is but one people who have boldly adopted it, and that is the Mexicans, who have taken it as their national emblem, and have associated it upon their coins with the shashea, or Barbary cap, intended to represent Liberty. It is doubtless from the word “karmus” that we have taken “kermes,”[243]the name of the insect growing upon it, and one variety of which furnishes the cochineal. The people of the Canary Islands call it “alcormas,”[244]which, in fact, is the kermus, the common term of the Arabs for fig. This, I think, suffices to vindicate the claims of Barbary to its prickly pear; for the people of the Canaries were driven from Africa at a remote period, and were of the race of the Shillohs, as their language, names, and customs, noted at the time of their discovery and conquest, can leave no doubt.

The aloe bears no fruit: the stalk of the blossom serves for the purposes of light timber. It blossoms about the seventh year, and then dies: it rises from the seed that falls. They are not acquainted with the liquor, like soured milk (yourt), which the Mexicans draw from it (pulke) by tapping. The Moors do not convert its fibres into the same beautiful work as the Mexicans, or the inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago, but they use them for sewing. An Arab woman, when she has needlework, goes into the garden to gather her thread: the thread, like the plant, is called “gorsean.” I have been told that some of the very old lace made by the Jews is of this fibre.

The kitchen-gardens surround every town like a suburb, and in them we have, no doubt, the “gardens of herbs” of the Jews. The distribution of land for a town under the Jewish system required a space sufficient for a garden for each household; and, beyond the ground so appropriated, there was the common land or pasturages. The same rule prevails here; and there is a common shepherd and cowherd who comes for the cattle in the morning and brings them home at night. The gardens are small squares, divided off internally with rows of tall reeds. There is a plank door with lintels; all the rest of the enclosure is of growing plants. The soil is generally sand: here in the gardens above the town, and through which I passed last night, it is nothing but sand, and its fertility depends on the shelter afforded it. The tall reeds fence it round; there is then a path on the four sides, on the inner side of the path fruit-trees; and the centre, between the trees and the path adjoining the reeds, is covered with a trellis, over which vines are trained. The smaller ones are without trees; so that, as you peep into them, they look like large rooms or corridors.

They say that the smell of the cistus cools one: I fancied I experienced the same effect in looking at the mirage-like colours of the cactus and aloe. But what is to be said of their forms?—can anything be more antithetical than the straight lines and the sharp points and daggers of the aloe, and the distorted contorted lobes and projections of the prickly pear? Mingled together, as they generally are, they keep the mind occupied with their strangeness and their contrasts. More than once I have heard Europeans express themselves angrily about them, and revile their “monstrosities.” As seen in our hot-houses, the form may be known, but that is all; no idea can be formed of the cavern-like alley with which, when they rise fifteen or twenty feet, they cover the ground. The aloe is the outer fence, orchevaux-de-frise, the cactus rising higher within: through these are mingled the tall slender reeds, as if to unite in one bond the three most dissimilar things in nature. Together, they form a fence which might delay an army, and present to the archer Phœbus a testudo which defies his shafts.

On the coast, the heat is tempered by the sea-breezes at the hottest times of the year and day; but the influence of these winds is lost as they pass inwards, and in three or four miles they become themselves heated. Along the Zahel their cooling breath is expended on the barren sand. Here the sands cease and the rich soil commences. There is no languid autumn and benumbing winter, no trying spring or scorching summer, but unceasing verdure and ever-springing plants.

To the south fertility is wanting; to the north there are the heavy vapours of the easterly wind. Sheltered from the blasts of the sea, though inhaling its health and freshness, and from the damp wind that sweeps through the Gut of Gibraltar and infects the shores of Spain and Morocco,—this region enjoys the richest soil, the most fortunate site in a clime where barren sand upon a mountain-top can bear the choicest fruits and the fairest flowers; a clime which combines the charms of every other, and preserves throughout the year the luxury of every season.

This climate is adapted to pulmonary invalids. During the latter days of November, the whole of December, and the half of January, we have had but three bad days: there has been but one day not splendid during our excursion. The want of trees along the coast—whatever the effect in summer—leaves in winter no masses of decomposed leaves to affect the air. The trees, where abundant, are evergreens; and the vines had not lost their leaves, which were coloured a deep red. The new figs were formed, and some of them as large as walnuts; the flowers were all in blossom; and, though it was cold at night, it was hot during the day. We have here the latitude of Madeira, without the exposure to its storms or sudden changes; nor does the barometer fluctuate even in storms. It has not fallen below “change.” I have seen pulmonary diseases, but it has been in the Jewish quarter, where they live in blocks of houses with the passage for the air below; sleeping on the floor, or even below the level of the court, twenty sometimes in a room, and with barrels of fermenting raisins in every house, from which they distil their spirits. Except under such circumstances, I have observed no trace of affection of the lungs; and, to all these advantages for a pulmonary patient, there would be added the bath.

[224]The Spaniards occupied Larache under PhilipII., and lost it under PhilipIII.(1689).

[225]It has since occurred to me that they might have been baths.

[226]TheRuscus aculeatus. It is the plant which the Spaniards prefer for adorning their patios, or courts; but in Spain the growth is not so luxuriant.

[227]At the moment that I discovered this trace of Pharaotic sculpture, I was struck with the attitude of the men around me. The Moors do not squat down like the Easterns, tailor-fashion, but they sit with their knees up, and on them rest their arms; and shrouded in their Gilabras, they are exactly like the sitting figures of Egypt.

[228]The Phœnician coins found in this neighbourhood, or in Spain, present the originals of the whole of the mythology and the arts of Greece. The plates to Don Bathagin’s (infant of Spain) edition of Sallust’s Jugurtha alone present the following list.

Laurel crowns. Ivy crown, with the bunch-like grapes. Ceres crown of corn-heads. The Mural crown. The star and crescent. The trident and dolphin. The sun and the sun and moon. Winged Pegasus. The palm-tree. The palm, lion, and the horse’s head. The Zampti, represented by four columns surmounted by a pediment. The winged Cupid and the winged Genius. The Genius and torch. The diadem and circlet. The helm and galley beak.

The art of coining they borrowed from the Greeks, and it seems to have been the only mention of that people; but the emblems represented were the ancient ones.

The mythological terms and names of Greece, in like manner may be cited.

Æolus, עעול,aol, storm.

Elysium fields, עליז,aliz, happy.

Erebus, the west, as used by Homer,Odyss.μʹ 12. Chaos, כהות ערב,chaüth ereb, evening darkness.

Myth, מות,muth, death.

Pan, פן,pan, “attonitus stupet.”

Thyrsus, תרזה,thyrza, pines.

Phallus, פלצות,phallasuth.

Orgy, רזא,rza, wrath.

Mystery,mistur, a thing hidden, Landseer.

Siren, שיר,sir, to sing.

Hero, חורים,horim, princes (Eccl. x.17).

Hades, חדס,hades, orhadasso, myrtle, whence Edessa, &c.

Satyr,satur, disguised.

Faun, פנים,phanim, a masque.

Tartarus,tara, warning (redoubled).

Cyclops,chem slub, lay of Selab (Chon.l. i. c.80).

Hephæstos,abfather,affire, whence also Vesta, usta, &c.

Persephone,perifruit,sophonlost.

Triptolemus,taropbreak,telearth,telensfurrow.

Golden apples,μήλα, golden fleece,μάλλον,malh, riches.

Toison (French),tsonsheep.

[229]The most desperate sea-fight ever known. The whole of the vanquished fleet was destroyed, and if I recollect right, only three of the victors escaped.

[230]“Jam nunc Emporiæ duo oppida erant muro divisa: unum Græci habebant a Phocæa unde et Massilienses oriundi, alterum Hispani.”—Livy.

[231]“Emporia vocant eam regionem ... una civitas ejus Liptis.”—Livyl.34.

[232]Carthage when it fell, was the richest, the most peopled, and strongest city in the world. It had seventy thousand citizens, and three hundred cities in Africa.

[233]Ὅσα γέγραπται πολίσματα καὶ ἐμπόρια ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ.

[234]“Viro latine loquens, ad illa multum imperatore rubesceret.”—Spartianus.

[235]“Ejus civitates lingua modo conversa connubio Numidarum.”

[236]“Inelegant as they may appear to the cultivated taste of an Englishman, they afford a voluptuous noon-tide retreat to the languid traveller. Even he, whose imagination can recall the enchanting scenery of Richmond or of Stowe, may perhaps experience new pleasure in viewing the glistening pomegranates in full blossom. Revived by the freshening breeze, the purling of the brooks, and the verdure of the groves, his ear will catch the melody of the nightingale, delightful beyond what is heard in England; with conscious gratitude to heaven, he will recline on the simple mat, bless the hospitable shelter, and perhaps, while indulging the pensive mood, he will hardly regret the absence of British refinement in gardening.”—Dr. Russell.

[237]Layard’s Nineveh,vol. ii. p.393.

[238]These gardens have been the occasion of preserving a trait of Moorish character: an old woman having had a portion of ground taken from her to complete the enclosure, appealed to the caïd,—

“The magistrate mounted his ass, taking with him a sack of enormous size, and presented himself before Hisham, who happened to be then sitting in a pavilion on the very ground belonging to the old woman. The arrival of the caïd, still more the sack, which he carried on his shoulders, surprised the caliph. Ibn Bechir having prostrated himself, entreated the monarch to allow him to fill his sack with some of the earth on which they then were. The request was granted, and when the sack was full, the caïd desired his master to help him to lift it on his ass. This strange demand astonished Alkakem still more, and he told the caïd that the load was too heavy. 'O prince,’ replied Ibn Bechir, 'this sack which you find too heavy, contains but a very small portion of the earth which you have unjustly taken from a poor woman; how then at the day of judgment shall you bear the weight of the whole?’”

[239]The valley of Jordan was like the garden of Eden and the land of Egypt.—Gen. xiii.10.

[240]“The Assyrians were probably also the inventors of the parks or paradises which were afterwards maintained with so much sumptuousness by the Persian kings of the Archimedian and Sassanian dynasties. In these spacious preserves various kinds of wild animals were continually kept for the diversion of the king, and for those who were privileged to join with him in the chase. These paradises were stocked, not only with some of every kind, but with various trees, shrubs, and plants; and were watered by numerous artificial streams. The Persian word has passed into various languages, and is used for the first abode of man before his fall, as well as for the state of eternal happiness.”—Layard’sNineveh,vol. ii. p.432.

[241]עז פריhez peri, fruit-tree.

[242]The leaf, besides, is one of their great specifics in medicine; it is used for hæmorroids. It is applied as a cataplasm for every kind of external disorders, and even to the buboes of the plague. The thick leaf is roasted in the oven, and then laid on hot.

[243]We have borrowed from them many other words.

Botany, frombatmore, turpentine-tree.

Herb,erbie, which signifies not only plants, but their season of appearance.

Wood,wood.

Lozenge,loze, almond, whence also Lusitania.

Bane, as in henbane.

Wort, as in colewort, fromwurde, rose; whence also “order,” the rose being the emblem of the order, whence, “under the rose.”

Lupin, signifies bean.

Artichoke,korshof.

Flower,flour, cauliflower.

Dalia, this is their word for vine.

Cabbage; they call a bunch of vegetables as brought to the market,habba, from it a portion may besnipped.

Truffle, their name isterfez.

[244]Vide vocabulary in Glass’s History of the Canary Islands.

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