40 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY tical economy, as well as in the literary fields of grammar, logic, poetry, and biography, the Arabian schools excelled.

Their schools, colleges, and universities were the resort of the learned of all nations ; but it was perhaps specially in the material development of their civilisation that their prosperity had its most direct effect in stimulating commercial intercourse with Negroland. An Arab historian, writing in the sixteenth century, says of Cordova, where Abdurrahman I. established his court : ** One thing is certain, namely, that trade and agriculture flourished in this place during the reigns of the sons of Ommeyah, in a degree which has scarcely been witnessed in any city of the world. Its market was always over-stocked with the fruits of the land, the productions of every district, and the best of every country.

No robe, however costly, no drug, however scarce, no jewel, however precious, no rarity of distant and unknown lands, but was to be procured in the bazaar of Cordova, and found hundreds of purchasers." There were 471 mosques and 300 public baths, of which the numbers afterwards increased. One ** trustworthy writer " counted the number of houses under the Caliph Al Mansur, and found 63,000 of the "great and noble, and 200,077 of the common people " ; there were at the same time upwards of 80,000 shops. Water from the mountains was conveyed to the royal palace of Cordova, and ** thence distributed through every corner and quarter of the city by means of leaden pipes into basins of different shapes, made of the purest gold, the finest silver, or plated brass, as well as into vast lakes, curious tanks, amazing reservoirs, and fountains of Grecian marble beautifully carved." The town in the time of the Ommeyades measured twenty-four miles by six, the greater part of which area was covered by mosques, palaces, and the houses of the great standing in beautiful gardens. These houses were palaces of luxury, magnificently decorated, cooled in summer by ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from