so as to
be protected from sudden incursions. Other tribes of the same family
occupied the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and
delighted in the unsettled life of nomads. There appeared to be in this
distant corner of Arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which
periodically overflowed its borders and spread over the world. It was
from this very region that we see the Kashdim, the true Chaldaeans,
issuing ready armed for combat,--a people whose name was subsequently
used to denote several tribes settled between the lower waters of the
Tigris and the Euphrates. It was there, among the marshes on either side
of these rivers, that the Aramoans established their first settlements
after quitting the desert. There also the oldest legends of the race
placed the cradle of the Phoenicians; it was even believed, about the
time of Alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people
had been discovered on the Bahrein Islands, the largest of which, Tylos
and Arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of Tyre and Arvad.
We are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the
route by which they reached the Mediterranean. The occurrence of violent
earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as
the Lake of Syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their
march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded
Sidon. The question arises as to the position of the Lake of Syria on
whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the Bahr-i-Nedjif
and the environs of Babylon; others, the Lake of Bambykes near the
Euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that
river, and having approached the country of their destination on its
north-eastern frontier. Another theory would seek to identify the lake
with the waters of Merom, the Lake of Galilee, or the Dead Sea; in this
case the horde must have crossed the neck of the Arabian peninsula,
from the Euphrates to the Jordan, through one of those long valleys,
sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.*
Several writers assure us that the Phoenician tradition of this exodus
was misunderstood by Herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered
on reaching Tyre was not the Persian Gulf, but the Dead Sea. If this had
been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to
causes mentioned in other documents. The Bible tells us tha