from the ancient name of Spain—Iberia.

So that now we talk of the ancient Vascones, Varduli, Autrigones and Caristii as particular divisions of the great Iberic stock, under their ancient names, the Euskaldunac being the same under a modern one; whilst the Basques and Navarrese are Euskaldunac, under French and Spanish designations.

The present Euskaldunacs must be a population of as pure blood as any in Europe, lineal descendants from the Autrigones, Varduli, and Vascones, and closely related to the Asturians. At any rate they are the purest blood in the Peninsula. This we infer from their language, and the mountaineer character of their area. They are the Welsh of Spain.

With the pure Euscaldunac let us now contrast the most mixed portion of the Peninsular population; which is that of the water-system of the Guadalquiver, and the parts immediately south and east of it—Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Grenada, and Murcia, if we take the modern provinces; the country of the Turdetani and Bastitani, if we look to the ancient populations—Bætica, if we adopt the general name of the Romans, Andalusia in modern geography.

The mountain-range between Jaen and Murcia, the Sagra Sierra, was originally the Mons Oros-peda, a fact which I notice, because the element -peda, occurs with a mere difference of dialect in the ancient name of the mountains of Burgos, Idu-beda. So that here, if nowhere else, we have a geographical name common to the northern and southern parts of the peninsula—an Iberic gloss in two distant localities. It was the Iberians of these parts who were the first to receive foreign intermixture, and the last to lose it, the Iberians of the Bætis, or Guadalquiver, favoured above all other nations of the peninsula in soil, in climate, and in situation. Strabo expatiates with enthusiasm almost unbecoming to a geographer, on their wealth, their industry, their commerce, and their civilization; and all this is no more than their physical condition prepares us to expect. Cities to the number of two hundred and upwards, docks, anachyses (or locks), lighthouses, canals, salt works, mines, agriculture, woven articles, fisheries, an alphabet, and a literature attest the civilization of the ancient Turdetanians as known to the writers of the reign of Augustus; at which time, however, the country was so Romanized that the Iberic tongue was already superseded by the Latin throughout the whole level country; Cordova and Seville,—the pre-eminently Roman towns of Spain,—having been founded by picked bodies of Romans and natives. Hence, in respect to its date, the Spanish of Andalusia is the oldest daughter of the Latin.

But the Romans were as little the first intruders who introduced foreign blood and foreign ideas into Southern Spain as they were the last. Their predecessors were the Phœnicians—sometimes direct from Tyre and Sidon, oftener from the Tyrian colony of Carthage. It was through the accounts of the Phœnicians that the earliest notices of Iberia found their way into Greece; it was through the Phœnicians that the Hellenic poets first heard of the columns of Hercules. It was through the Phœnician—Punic or Tyrian, as the case might be—that the mining and commercial industry of Turdetania was developed. Through them, too, probably (but not certainly) came the alphabet. I say probably, because the shape of the letters is Greek or Italian rather than Phœnician. As the Phœnician settlements seem to have been factories rather than colonies, and as their marriages must have been with native women, their influence was moral rather than physical, i.e., they introduced new ideas rather than new blood. Their contact with the Turdetanians may be spread over some seven centuries—from about 900 to 200 B.C.

New ideas, too, rather than new blood was what was introduced by the Romans; the great change which they effected being that of the language from Iberic to Latin. At the same time, it is by no means safe to say that the Turdetanian civilization was wholly of foreign origin—half Roman and half Phœnician. The inland cities could scarcely be the latter. Yet they existed when Rome first began its conquests. So high do I put either the actual civilization of the southern Iberians, or (what is nearly the same thing) the capacity for receiving its elements, that I doubt whether it stands on a lower level than that of Northern Italy itself minus its geographical advantages of contiguity to Greece. Their remote position was a great disadvantage, and so was the comparative smallness of their sea-board, arising from the unindented character of the peninsular coast.

Between the garrisons of Rome and Carthage we may safely assume some intermixture of native African blood—Numidian, Gætulian, or Mauritanian—Amazirgh, Kabail, or Berber. It is safe, too, not exactly to exclude Greek influences from Turdetanian Iberia altogether, but to hold as a general rule that, from the monopolizing character of the Phœnician commerce—especially the Carthaginian branch of it—the Greek and Phœnician influences were in the inverse ratio to each other.

The chief negative fact connected with ancient Bætica is, that none of its geographical localities end in -briga, a remark, of which we shall soon see the import.

The Roman power in Spain was broken by those populations, who gave to Spain the important foreign elements of the fifth century. These are said to be the Alans, the Vandals, the Suevi, and the Goths. Concerning the first of these there is a doubt. The true Alani were a people from the parts between the rivers Volga and Jaik to the north, and the range of Caucasus to the south—people whose nearest neighbours were the Circassians and Russians, or, at any rate, their ancient equivalents: people whose affinities were Asiatic; and whose nearest kinsmen were the Huns, the Avars, the Khazars, and the Turks. Now I do not say that the presence of such a population in Spain, in the first ten years of the fifth century (about A.D. 408) is impossible; perhaps, indeed, it is probable. The Huns, with whom the Alans were allied, were then hanging, like a cloud charged with thunder, over Europe, about to carry carnage and desolation as far westward as the plains of Champagne. And the Alans will help them. So I do not deny that they may have invaded Spain. I remark, however,—as good authorities have done before me—that, except in Spain, the Suevi are almost always in alliance with the Alemanni; a nation with a name so like that of the Alani, as for confusion to be likely. Such confusion, I think, existed here: in other words, I believe that the invaders of Spain were the Suevi and Alemanni—not the Suevi and Alani. If the view be wrong, we must admit an intermixture—inconsiderable, perhaps, in amount—of Turk blood.

The Vandals—for reasons given elsewhere—I believe to have been no Germans at all, but Slavonians under a German leader, the ancestors of the present Serbs of Silesia and Lusatia: since the express statement of Idatius is that they were Vandali Silingi. Now the Silingi can easily be shown to have been the old Silesians. The existence of Slavonic blood in Spain was first indicated by the present writer; and as Andal-usia took its name from the Vandals in question, the local ethnologist may be well employed in seeking for Slavonic elements in a quarter where they have not hitherto been suspected. As the Vandals, too, of Andalusia were the Vandals of Genseric, Gelimir, and the kings of northern Africa, it must be Slavonic rather than German blood, which is not unreasonably supposed to exist amongst some of the mountaineers of Algeria. Whether the Vandals occupied Andalusia to the comparative exclusion of the Goths is uncertain.

The Suevi of Spain must have been but little different from