ion of
the country, whose rude rock-sculptures may still be seen in the Wadi
el-Qana near Tyre. Then there were the intrusive Amorites and
Canaanites, the Amorites with their fair skins and blue eyes who made
themselves a home in the mountains, and the Semitic Canaanites who
settled on the coast and in the plains. The Amorite migration went back
to an epoch long before that of the first Babylonian conquests in the
West; the Canaanitish migration may have been coeval with the latter
event. Next came the Hittites, to whom the Jebusites of Jerusalem may
have belonged; then the Philistines, who seized the southern coast but a
few years previously to the Israelitish invasion. Canaan was a land of
many races and many peoples, who had taken shelter in its highlands, or
had found their further progress barred by the sea. Small as it was, it
was the link between Asia and Africa, the battle-ground of the great
kingdoms which arose on the Euphrates and the Nile. It formed, in fact,
the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the mixture of races
within it was due in great measure to its central position. The culture
of Babylonia and Egypt met there and coalesced.

[Footnote 2: Numb. xiii. 29.]

[Footnote 3: 1 Chr. ii. 55; Jer. xxxv. 3-10.]

[Footnote 4: 1 Sam. xxx. 14.]

[Footnote 5: Deut. xxiii 8.]

CHAPTER III

THE NATIONS OF THE SOUTH-EAST

Israel was cut in two by the Jordan. The districts east of the Jordan
were those that had first been conquered; it was from thence that the
followers of Joshua had gone forth to possess themselves of Canaan. But
this division of the territory was a source of weakness. The interests
of the tribes on the two sides of the river were never quite the same;
at times indeed they were violently antagonistic. When the disruption of
the monarchy came after the death of Solomon, Judah was the stronger for
the fact that the eastern tribes followed those of the north. The
eastern tribes were the first to lose their independence; they were
carried into Assyrian captivity twelve years before the fall of Samaria
itself.

The eastern side of Jordan, in fact, belonged of right to the kinsfolk
of the Israelites, the children of Lot. Ammon and Moab derived their
origin from the nephew of Abraham, not from the patriarch himself, the
ancestor of Ammon being Ben-Ammi, "the Son of Ammi," the national god of
the race. It was said that the two peoples were the offspring of incest,
and the cave w