Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. The White City
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now raised jubilantly aloft in sunlight and color, in
dazzling gold and blue!
In the year in which Methuselah died, a number of
bold young Phænicians sailed a little beyond the end
of the world - which then ended at Gibraltar - and
founded the city of Cádiz. They built the city on a
small island which, connected with Spain by a narrow
sand bank, extends into the ocean like an attenuated
neck.
Cádiz soon became an important mart for staples.
It was the intermediary in all maritime commerce
between the Orient and England, the Baltic Sea and
northern France. Gold, amber, purple, metal ores,
precious stones and woods: all the treasures of
antiquity passed through this city. The city grew,
increasing in wealth and beauty, and acquiring a
peculiarly feminine lust for power, which made it surrender
its charms successively to the most powerful races, first
to Carthage, then to Rome. Cesar fortified the city
and made it a military port; it became the center of
world commerce, the queen of the seas. For a brief
moment the wavering focus of civilization flickered
over Cadiz before it passed on to Cordoba and Seville.
The Moors did not succeed in drawing any profit
from the city, closely surrounded as it was by deep
waters. It dropped back into the sea, to emerge after
a thousand years, when the new world began to be
exploited. Again Cadiz became the middleman, between
two worlds this time. Great shipyards grew up;
every banking and commercial house in the world had
its branches there. Merchants swarmed through its
streets when the commercial flotillas returned from
America: Russians, Jews, Hindoos, Berbers, blonde
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