I have long felt very desirous to visit a country, which,
notwithstanding the many revolutions it has undergone, and the
enlightened characters of its conquerors, is regarded as still
immersed in a degree of barbarism almost unparalleled.
It appeared to
me next to impossible that a nation so contiguous to Europe, with
which it has for centuries maintained a constant intercourse, could
have remained in a state of such profound ignorance.
Impressed with these ideas, I readily embraced the offer of a friend
to accompany him from Gibraltar to this place, intending to travel
further up the country, should I meet with sufficient inducement from
the result of my observations here. We landed on the first of this
month, and the intermediate time I have employed in obtaining
information relative to the town of Tangiers from the earliest
tradition to the present time. As the particulars I have collected do
not appear devoid of Interest, I flatter myself, you will be gratified
that I should have made them the subject of a letter.
This town, which by the ancients was called _Tingis_, or Tingir, and
appears to have been the metropolis of the _Western Mauritania_, or
Tingitania, as it was named, to distinguish it from _Mauritania
Caesariensis_; according to Pliny and others, was first founded
ed fay _Antaeus_ (about a thousand years before Christ), the
same who was afterwards conquered and slain by _Hercules_. The giant
is supposed to have been buried here: and the report of Plutarch, that
his tomb was opened by Sertorius, and a corpse sixty cubits or more in
length, taken out of it, confirms the idea.
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