the Pulpit of the Church of
St. Augustine, Saragossa, 1809 144

The Duke de la Torre sworn in as Regent before
the Cortes of 1869 152

A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.

CHAPTER I.

No name is more fraught with picturesque and romantic interest than
that of the "Spanish Peninsula."

After finishing this rare bit of handiwork nature seems to have thrown
up a great ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to protect it; and
the Pyrenees have stood for ages a frowning barrier, descending toward
France on the northern side from gradually decreasing heights--but on
the Spanish side in wild disorder, plunging down through steep chasms,
ravines, and precipices--with sharp cliffs towering thousands of feet
skyward, which better than standing armies protect the sunny plains
below.

But the "Spanish Peninsula," at the time we are about to consider,
was neither "Spanish" nor was it a "peninsula." At the dawn of history
this sunny corner of Europe was known as _Iberia_, and its people as
_Iberians_.

Time has effaced all positive knowledge of this aboriginal race; but
they are believed to have come from the south, and to have been allied
to the Libyans, who inhabited the northern coast of Africa. In fact,
_Iberi_ in the Libyan tongue meant _freeman_; and _Berber_, apparently
derived from that word, was the term by which all of these western
peoples were known to the Ancient Egyptians.

But it is suspected that the Iberians found it an easy matter to flow
into the land south of the Pyrenees, and that they needed no boats for
the transit. There has always existed a tradition of the joining
of the two continents, and now it is believed by geologists that
an isthmus once really stretched across to the African coast at
the narrowest point of the Straits, at a time when the waters of a
Mediterranean gulf, and the waters flowing over the sands of Sahara,
together found their outlet in the Indian Ocean.

There is also a tradition that the adventurous Phenicians, who are
known to have been in Iberia as early as 1300 B.C., cut a canal
through the narrow strip of land, and then built a bridge across
the canal. But a bridge was a frail link by which to hold the mighty
continents together. The Atlantic, glad of such an entrance to the
great gulf beyond, must have rushed impetuously through, gradually
widening the opening, and (may have) thus permanently severed Europe