towns. As we ascended them, the rock fields of the Lejah (the modern name for Argob) were spread out on the right; and there, too, the ancient cities were thickly planted. Not less than thirty of the threescore cities of Argob were in view at one time on that day; their black houses and ruins half concealed by the black rocks amid which they are built, and their massive towers rising up here and there, like the keeps of old Norman fortresses' (p. 28). These were the giant cities which Jair proudly called the hamlets of Jair. It was strange that the name lasted up to the time of Moses' last words: and thus the obnoxious expression is fully explained.

§ 2.-Geographical Difficulties.

Among the geographical notices of the Pentateuch, not a few are alleged to be inconsistent with the time of Moses. It may be well to begin with such as regard the cardinal points.

I.

The first is the term seaward, which is frequently used as equivalent to westward. In Genesis xii. 8, xxviii. 14; Exodus x. 19, xxvi. 22, xxvii. 13, xxxviii. 12, we find the expressions, D in the sense of westward, which in most of the places indicate the locality of the writer or writers to have been Canaan. It is said, indeed, that the present mode of designating the west is conceivable from one in Arabia or the land of Moab; but this is questionable, at least in some cases. Keil must have felt it to be so when he adds, without evidence, that the geographical designation of the cardinal points may have been fixed for the Hebrew language so early as by the patriarchs. At the present time this appears to us improbable.' So argues Davidson.1

1 Ib. pp. 12, 13.

It would be a most interesting subject of investigation to trace to their origin the terms employed in different languages to designate the cardinal points. Ethnology might gain much; and the original seats of nations, as well as their connection with one another, would have some new lights thrown upon them. The ancient Egyptians, looking southward, represented the right-hand side by the same hieroglyphic as they used for the west; and the east by the same as they used for the lefthand. If the old Bactrian word apâkthara means the region behind, as Pictet believes,2 the Iranians who use it for the north must also have turned southward. But their Aryan brethren certainly looked eastward before they broke up into their several nationalities, as the Indo-germanic languages bear ample witness.3 In Sanscrit savya, means left-hand and north; fa dakshina, right-hand and south; prânch, east and in front; af pashchima, western and posterior. The Semitic terms for the cardinal points originate in the same view. Thus the general designation for the west in Hebrew is in or what is behind; and in the rock-tablet of Tiglath Pileser I. (1130-1110 A.C.) the Mediterranean is designated as the great hinder sea.* Here we have

दक्षिण

a combination of the two Hebrew denominations for the west. For seaward, as Davidson observes, occurs frequently in the Pentateuch in that sense.

1 See the Feb. number of Zeits. für Ägypt, &c., 1865; where the views of Champollion and of some other Egyptian scholars are corrected. Perhaps, however, as among the Romans, the left-hand in religious language was not the same as it was geographically.

2 Les Origines Indo-Européennes, &c., Paris, 1859, vol. i. p. 114, note 1. Justi in his Handbuch der Zendsprache assigns a different meaning to the word.

But he is certainly wrong in deducing from this circumstance that the locality of the writer must have been Canaan. It is even anything but certain that the term took its rise in Canaan. For Tiglath Pileser's inscription shows that it was perfectly suitable to the longitude of Assyria. But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that Canaan was its birthplace, how could that prevent Moses or any other Hebrew from using it out of the country? From the Canaanitish names of towns in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Egyptian monuments, and from the specimens of ancient Phenician still preserved in classic authors, or found in inscriptions, all orientalists have come to the conclusion that the Hebrew and Phenician were the same language, and differed only dialectically.1 So that Abraham coming into Canaan with his cognate Aramaic could have had small difficulty in speaking the language of the country where he sojourned. In Isaac it became his native tongue; and it was that same language that was carried by his grandchildren into Egypt, and brought back in singular purity by their descendants to the land of its birth. If, therefore, the term seaward was used in Canaan to designate the west before the immigration into Egypt, surely the Hebrews in Egypt could still continue to use it in this secondary sense, although in its primary meaning it was no longer appropriate.

The analogies of other languages are here very instructive. The Greenlander uses kita-the sea-precisely as the Hebrew does D2 If two Greenlanders in any part of the world spoke of the west in the terms of their own language, would they pedantically stop to consider whether their actual geographical position at the moment authorised them to employ the usual word? The Indian uses for the west the term varunî, that is region of the

1 See Renan, Hist. Gen. et des Langues Sem. liv. ii. c. 1, pp. 111, &c. 2 * Kleinsmidt, Groenl. Gram. ap. Pictet, ib. i. p. 112.

ocean.1 And yet the Indian Ocean is on the south. The word had, therefore, been incorporated into the language before he crossed the Himalayas. Our own west seems explicable only on the same principle we are illustrating in the Hebrew. Its primitive meaning is gone; and its secondary one is used without any reference to the geographical position in which it apparently originated. The English west is in Scandinavian vestr, old German west, westen. These words are connected with another group expressing the idea of desert: our waste, Anglo-Saxon westen, old German wôsti; and also with a third, Scandinavian vast, wæst denoting sea, and allied with the Latin rastum. The root of these groups seems to be the Sanscrit vas, meaning dry or sterile, which is also found in the Irish fas'. The origin of these different meanings Pictet very simply accounts for by the situation of Bactriana, from which region as a centre the primitive Aryans seem to have commenced their wanderings. Between Bactriana and the western Caspian there was an immense desert. The sea was but its continuation, and, as Burnes describes it in his travels to Bokhara, resembled it extremely in appearance. This origin is all the more likely from the existence of another large group of words in the same family, carrying with them the signification of sea and west; that is mare from the root m", whence in Sanscrit comes mira or mara, which designates the west.? Whether the word meant originally desert or sea, or something common to both, it is clear that its use in the Indogermanic languages is now quite independent of relation either to the sea or the desert.3

Pictet, ib. pp. 109-115.

3 In much the same way, the civilised world speaks of Europe, without attending to the geographical position implied in the word. In Semitic ereb signifies the west; and it was in exploring the west that the Phenicians were said to sail in search of Europa. The Portuguese title Prince of the

And why should it not be so with the Hebrew ? It is admitted that the term was quite appropriate in the mouth of a Hebrew settled in Palestine. It must, therefore, have been equally appropriate in the mouth of the Phenicians or Canaanites who preceded the Hebrews in the occupation of the country. It was appropriate, therefore, in the mouth of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, and his sons; and also in the mouth of Moses, who learned the language from their descendants. A little more consideration on the part of Davidson might have induced him to spare those strictures on Keil, which were called for neither by logic nor philology. For it was no part of Keil's business to prove, independently of the Pentateuch, that the word was actually in use among the Hebrews before Moses; but only to show that the analogy of language made it possible. Davidson's argument is of no force whatever, unless he show the impossibility of its use by Moses.

After these remarks it is needless to enter into a refutation of Colenso's objections drawn from the sea-wind that drove away the locusts from Egypt (Ex. x. 19). For it is the same idea which lies at the bottom of his observations. What he says of the east-wind requires a passing notice. Feeling the worthlessness of his former argument, which, he confesses, may be easily explained on the hypothesis of Mosaic authorship, he adds: As it is, the phenomenon in question is but one of many like phenomena, as e.g. that in Gen. xli. 6, the east wind is spoken of as a parching wind, which, as Gesenius observes, "it certainly is in Palestine, but not in Egypt, whence the

Algarves' represents the Arabic form for the west-al Gharb. So Hesperia was the Greek name of Italy, as it lay to the west. And yet no one would quarrel with a Spaniard who chose to speak of it as Hesperia. (See Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 44, note 1; iv. 45, note 3.)