e mountain and his place was taken
by Joshua.

Joshua was a general and not a legislator. He could win battles and
destroy cities, but he could not restore what he had destroyed, or
organise his followers into a state. Jericho, which commanded the ford
across the Jordan, fell into his hands; the confederate kings of
southern Canaan were overthrown in battle, and the tribe of Ephraim, to
which Joshua belonged, was established in the mountainous region which
afterwards bore its name. Henceforward the mountains of Ephraim formed
the centre and the stronghold of Israelitish power in Palestine, from
whence the invading tribes could issue forth to conquest, or to which
they could retreat for shelter in case of need.

Beyond leading his people into Canaan and establishing them too firmly
in its midst to be ever dislodged, Joshua personally did but little. The
conquest of Canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the
days of the monarchy. Jerusalem was not captured till the reign of
David, Gezer was the dowry received by Solomon along with his Egyptian
wife. At first the Canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity.
Their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the
spoil divided among the conquerors. But a time soon came when tribute
was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the
Canaanitish cities, and the Israelites intermarried with the older
population of the country. As in Britain after the Saxon conquest, the
invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while
the peasantry was Israelite the townsfolk either remained Canaanite or
were a mixture of the two races.

The mixture introduced among the Israelites the religion and the
beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the Canaanitish people.
The Mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the
wilderness were ignored. Alone at Shiloh, in the heart of Ephraim, was a
memory of the past observed; here the descendants of Aaron served in the
tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the Mosaic code. Here alone
no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant
was the symbol of the national God.

But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far. The age that succeeded
the entrance into Canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war. Hardly
had the last effort of the Canaanites against their invaders been
overthrown on the banks of the Kishon, when a ne