Uriconium, once a goodly city under several Roman emperors. No promiscuous huddle of wattled cottages and clay cabins was it in those days of Roman power and dominion. For twice the life's length of civilization in the Western Hemisphere the all-conquering eagle outstretched its silken wings over the walls of that busy city, now so dead and deeply buried. Pieces of its skeleton have been exhumed, such as carved columns and capitals, ornaments, coins, and all the ordinary articles of a civilized people, proving that it was a permanent city of homes and families. How mysterious the evaporation of that mighty empire—of such unparalleled solidities of human character! The Romans cane to this island to subdue its soil and climate as well as its wild population. Doubtless they felt more pride in making the conquest than in the overthrow of Carthage and the extinction of the Punic nation; for this was the Ultima Thule, this was the extreme western wall of the known world which Alexander never reached, and on this Rome should plant her eagles as the conterminous boundary of the earth and of her own empire. All their lines of march, all the roads they made, the walled cities they built, and the military posts they planted, proved this intent and ambition. It was not to extirpate or enslave, but to subdue a savage people to the conditions of civilization that
