of which still remain in place.[5159] The blocks are squared, carefully dressed, and arranged in horizontal courses, without any cement.  Some of them are as much as eleven feet long by six feet or somewhat more in height.  The wall was flanked at the corners by square towers, and formed a sort of irregular hexagon, above a mile in circumference.[5160] A large building within the walls seems to have been a temple;[5161] and in it was found one of those remarkable conical stones which are known to have been employed in the Phoenician worship.  The estuary of the river formed a tolerably safe harbour for the Phoenician ships, and the valley down which the river flows gave a ready access into the interior.

In Spain, outside the Pillars of Hercules, the chief Phoenician settlements were Tartessus, Agadir or Gades, and Belon.  Tartessus has been regarded by some as properly the name of a country rather than a town;[5162] but the statements of the Greek and Roman geographers to the contrary are too positive to be disregarded.  Tartessus was a town in the opinions of Scymnus Chius, Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Festus Avienus, and Pausanias,[5163] who could not be, all of them, mistaken on such a point.  It was a town named from, or at any rate bearing the same name with, an important river of southern Spain,[5164] probably the Guadalquivir.  It was not Gades, for Scymnus Chius mentions both cities as existing in his day;[5165] it was not Carteia, for it lay west of Gades, while Carteia lay east.  Probably it occupied, as Strabo thought, a small island between two arms of the Guadalquivir, and gradually decayed as Gades rose to importance.  It certainly did not exist in Strabo’s time, but five or six centuries earlier it was a most flourishing place.[5166] If it is the Tarshish of Scripture, its prosperity and importance must have been even anterior to the time of Solomon, whose “navy of Tarshish” brought him once in every three years “gold, and silver, and ivory, and apes, and peacocks."[5167] The south of Spain was rich in metallic treasures, and yielded gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin;[5168] trade along the west coast of Africa would bring in the ivory and apes abundant in that region; while the birds called in our translation of the Bible “peacocks” may have been guinea-fowl.  The country on either side of the Guadalquivir to a considerable distance took its name from the city, being called Tartessis.[5169] It was immensely productive.  “The wide plains through which the Guadalquiver flows produced the finest wheat, yielding an increase of a hundredfold; the oil and the wine, the growth of the hills, were equally distinguished for their excellence.  The wood was not less remarkable for its fineness than in modern times, and had a native colour beautiful without dye."[5170] Nor were the neighbouring sea and stream less bountiful.  The tunny was caught in large quantities off the coast, shell-fish were abundant and of unusual size,[5171] while huge eels were sometimes taken by the fishermen, which, when salted, formed an article of commerce, and were reckoned a delicacy at Athenian tables.[5172]