salt-pans;[5151] Abdera lay in the neighbourhood of productive
silver-mines.[5152] These were afterwards worked from Carthagena,
which was a late Carthaginian colony, founded by Asdrubal, the uncle
of Hannibal. Malaga and Carthagena (i.e. New-Town) had well-sheltered
harbours; but the ports of Sexti and Abdera were indifferent.

Outside the Straits of Gibraltar, on the shores of the Atlantic, were
two further sets of Phoenician colonies, situated respectively in Africa
and in Spain. The most important of those in Africa were Tingis (now
Tangiers) and Lixus (now Chemmish), but besides these there were a vast
number of staples ({emporia}) without names,[5153] spread along the
coast as far as Cape Non, opposite the Canary Islands. Tingis, a second
Gibraltar, lay nearly opposite that wonderful rock, but a little west
of the narrowest part of the strait. It had a temple of the Tyrian
Hercules, said to have been older than that at Gades;[5154] and
its coins have Phoenician legends.[5155] The town was situated on
a promontory running out to the north-east at the extremity of a
semicircular bay about four miles in width, and thus possessed a harbour
not to be despised, especially on such a coast. The country around
was at once beautiful and fertile, dotted over with palms, and well
calculated for the growth of fruit and vegetables. The Atlas mountains
rose in the background, with their picturesque summits, while in front
were seen the blue Mediterranean, with its crisp waves merging into the
wilder Atlantic, and further off the shores of Spain, lying like a blue
film on the northern horizon.[5156]

While Tingis lay at the junction of the two seas, on the northern
African coast, about five miles east of Cape Spartel, Lixus was situated
on the open Atlantic, forty miles to the south of that cape, on the
West African coast, looking westward towards the ocean. The streams