I
Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against
his opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the
city as I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from his
own reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this
_Seville in the Hand,_ as it calls itself, but I got it too late for use
in exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those
directions which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious
past. The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, and
holds with historians who accept the Phosnicians as the sufficiently
remote founders of Seville. This does not put out of commission those
Biblical "ships of Tarshish" which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in his
graphic sketch of Spanish history, has sailing to and from the
neighboring coasts. Very likely they came up the Guadalquivir, and lay
in the stream where a few thousand years later I saw those cheerful
tramp-steamers lying. At any rate, the Phoenicians greatly flourished
there, and gave their colony the name of Hispalis, which it remained
content with till the Romans came and called the town Julia Romula, and
Julius Ctesar fenced it with the strong walls which the Moorish
conquerors, after the Goths, reinforced and have left plain to be seen
at this day.
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