Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is

a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt

against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and

keep to themselves.

Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it

was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin,

landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus,

the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the

fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called

Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and

carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly

obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work.

They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country

residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the

coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone

now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a

personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an

enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good,

bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional.

Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that

hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier

country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact

makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not

have kept a journal.

The Innocents Abroad