ht be useful
to his success, or to scatter among his enemies the seeds of hatred and
contention. Almost in the moment of his departure he was informed
that Hermanric, king of the Suevi, had presumed to ravage the Spanish
territories, which he was resolved to abandon. Impatient of the insult,
Genseric pursued the hasty retreat of the Suevi as far as Merida;
precipitated the king and his army into the River Anas, and calmly
returned to the sea-shore to embark his victorious troops. The vessels
which transported the Vandals over the modern Straits of Gibraltar, a
channel only twelve miles in breadth, were furnished by the Spaniards,
who anxiously wished their departure; and by the African general, who
had implored their formidable assistance.

Our fancy, so long accustomed to exaggerate and multiply the martial
swarms of Barbarians that seemed to issue from the North, will perhaps
be surprised by the account of the army which Genseric mustered on the
coast of Mauritania. The Vandals, who in twenty years had penetrated
from the Elbe to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their
warlike king; and he reigned with equal authority over the Alani, who
had passed, within the term of human life, from the cold of Scythia
to the excessive heat of an African climate. The hopes of the bold
enterprise had excited many brave adventurers of the Gothic nation; and
many desperate provincials were tempted to repair their fortunes by the
same means which had occasioned their ruin. Yet this various multitude
amounted only to fifty thousand effective men; and though Genseric
artfully magnified his apparent strength, by appointing eighty
_chiliarchs_, or commanders of thousands, the fallacious increase of old
men, of children, and of slaves, would scarcely have swelled his army
to the number of four-score thousand persons. But his own dexterity,
and the discontents of Africa, soon fortified the Vandal powers, by the
accession of numerous and active allies. The parts of Mauritania which
border on the Great Desert and the Atlantic Ocean, were filled with
a fierce and untractable race of men, whose savage temper had been
exasperated, rather than reclaimed, by their dread of the Roman
arms. The wandering Moors, as they gradually ventured to approach the
seashore, and the camp of the Vandals, must have viewed with terror and
astonishment the dress, the armor, the martial pride and discipline
of the unknown strangers who had landed on their