Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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During this
interval, we employed ourselves in preparing the plants we had
collected in the beautiful valleys of Galicia, which no naturalist
had yet visited:
We examined the fuci and the mollusca which the
north-west winds had cast with great profusion at the foot of the
steep rock, on which the lighthouse of the Tower of Hercules is
built. This edifice, called also the Iron Tower, was repaired in
1788. It is ninety-two feet high, its walls are four feet and a
half thick, and its construction clearly proves that it was built
by the Romans. An inscription discovered near its foundation, a
copy of which M. Laborde obligingly gave me, informs us, that this
pharos was constructed by Caius Sevius Lupus, architect of the city
of Aqua Flavia (Chaves), and that it was dedicated to Mars. Why is
the Iron Tower called in the country by the name of Hercules? Was
it built by the Romans on the ruins of a Greek or Phoenician
edifice? Strabo, indeed, affirms that Galicia, the country of the
Callaeci, had been peopled by Greek colonies. According to an
extract from the geography of Spain, by Asclepiades the Myrlaean,
an ancient tradition stated that the companions of Hercules had
settled in these countries.
The ports of Ferrol and Corunna both communicate with one bay, so
that a vessel driven by bad weather towards the coast may anchor in
either, according to the wind.
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