CHAP. II.
91
persons, to the conclusion, that the Tarshish ofthe Jews and the TapnjowJe of the Greeks was acountry in the southernmost part of Europe 1 .We read in the ancient writers of the riverTartessus—of the island Tartessus —of a cityTartessus—and of a province Tartessus . Fromthese various objects to which the name is ap-plied, as well as from the uncertainty of thenames given by ancient geography, we may, per-haps, safely infer the little dependence which canbe placed on the name of the precise place. Itmay not be unnatural to suppose that the firstvisiters gave a general name to a large country,m the same manner as the discoverers of America gave to that continent, and the islands collec-tively, the name of the Western Indies. Tar-shish, which was in the westernmost part ofEurope , according to the Greeks, may thencomprehend the whole of the division of Spain an d Portugal, from the mouth of the river Ebro to Cape St. Vincent , or it may have includedthe whole of both the modern kingdoms of thePeninsula , as far as they were known to thePhoenicians and Carthaginians.
It is more difficult to fix the precise date ofthe first intercourse between Phoenicia and^Pain, though the commerce must have been