from Atlas here collect into a considerable river, known now as the
Wady-el-Khous, and anciently as the Lixus.[5157] The estuary of this
river, before reaching the sea, meanders through the plain of
Sidi Oueddar, from time to time returning upon itself, and forming
peninsulas, which are literally almost islands.[5158] From this plain,
between two of the great bends made by the stream, rose in one place
a rocky hill; and here the Phoenicians built their town, protecting it
along the brow of the hill with a strong wall, portions 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