h people; and
it is probably to the Iberian strain in the blood that may be traced
the small, dark type of men which largely prevails in Spain, and to
some extent also in central and southern France.

But the Keltiberians were Keltic in their religion. There are now in
Spain the usual monuments found wherever Druid worship prevailed. Huge
blocks of stone, especially in Cantabria and Lusitania (Portugal),
standing alone or in circles, tell the story of Druidical rites, and
of the worship of the ocean, the wind, and the thunder, and of the
placating of the powers of nature by human sacrifices.

The mingling of the Kelts and the Iberians in varying proportions in
different parts of Spain, and in some places (as among the Basques)
their mingling not at all, produced that diversity of traits which
distinguished the _Asturians_ in the mountain gorges from their
neighbors the _Cantabrians_, and both these from the _Catalonians_ in
the northeast and the _Gallicians_ on the northwest coast, and from
the _Lusitanians_, where now is Portugal; and still more distinguished
the _Basques_, in the rocky ravines of the Pyrenees, from each and
all of the others. And yet these unlike members of one family were
collectively known as Keltiberians.

While this race--hardy, temperate, brave, and superstitious--was
leading its primitive life upon the Iberian peninsula, while they
were shooting arrows at the sky to threaten the thunder, drawing their
swords against the rising tide, and prizing iron more dearly than
their abundant gold and silver, because they could hammer it into
hooks, and swords, and spears--there had long existed in the East a
group of wonderful civilizations: the Egyptian, hoary with age and
steeped in wisdom and in wickedness; the _Chaldeans_, who, with
"looks commercing with the skies," were the fathers of astronomy;
the _Assyrians_ and _Babylonians_, with their wonderful cities of
_Nineveh_ and _Babylon_, and the Phenicians, with their no less famous
cities of _Sidon_ and _Tyre_. Sidon, which was the more ancient of
these two, is said to have been founded by Sidon, the son of Canaan,
who was the great-grandson of Noah.

Of all these nations it was the Phenicians who were the most
adventurous. They were a Semitic people, Syrian in blood, and their
home was a narrow strip of coast on the east of the Mediterranean,
where a group of free cities was joined into a confederacy held
together by a strong national spirit.