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Laden with these the Carthaginians set out on their return to camp. Loaded as they were it was a long and toilsome journey, and they would have had great difficulty in finding their way back had not Malchus taken the precaution of leaving four or five men at different points with instructions to keep fires of damp wood burning so that the smoke should act as a guide.
By this time nearly all the infantry had cleared the defile, when at daybreak a dense mist enveloped the whole defile and the neighbouring plains; which Hasdrubal perceiving, sent to Nero to put off the conference to the following day, as the Carthaginians held that day sacred from the transaction of any serious business. Not even then was the cheat suspected.
The Carthaginians pushed them, and at daybreak they projected into the plain like the steps of an immense ruined staircase. The Barbarians were still unable to climb them. Ladders were held out for their assistance; all rushed upon them. The discharge of a catapult drove the crowd back; only the Ten were taken away.
Nothing was done towards their execution, except that some Carthaginian patriots were compromised; no choice was left to the Carthaginians but to show unconditional submission to Rome.
It was well indeed for the Carthaginians that Scipio was not awaiting them at the foot of the Alps, but was making his way northwards from Pisa to the strong fortress of Placentia on the Po. Among the friendly Gallic tribe of the Insubres, to whom Hannibal was united by the bond of hate of Rome, the troops rested and slept, and the horses and elephants grew fat once more.
They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of the sword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels. When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over the whole plain to find others. But were they not in possession of Carthaginians twenty captives taken in the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present?
For four days the Romans pursued their search in the forest, but never once did they obtain a glimpse of the Carthaginians save when, on several occasions, the latter appeared suddenly in places inaccessible from below and hurled down rocks and stones upon them.
His achievements compelled Cato the elder, who, a generation after Hamilcar's death, beheld in Spain the still fresh traces of his working, to exclaim, notwithstanding all his hatred of the Carthaginians, that no king was worthy to be named by the side of Hamilcar Barcas.
It is evident he was a clear thinker only on certain points; his preface, e.g., is intricate both in matter and manner. It remains to consider him shortly as a philosophic and as an artistic historian. On these points some excellent remarks are made by M. Taine. When we read or write a history of Rome we ask, Why was it that Rome conquered the Samnites, the Carthaginians, the Etruscans?
The population of islands being in general less exposed than that of continents to the effect of migrations, we may presume that, in the time of the Carthaginians and the Greeks, the archipelago of the Canaries was inhabited by the same race of men as were found by the Norman and Spanish conquerors.
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