Part 9

It was, first, the advance of the Hatti (Hittites) into Syria, which began in the time of Amen-hotep III., but became far more threatening in that of his successor, and next, the resumption of the second Arabian migration, which most seriously undermined the Egyptian power in Asia. Of the former we cannot speak here (see HITTITES), except so far as to remark the Abd-Ashirta and his son Aziru, though at first afraid of the Hatti, was afterwards clever enough to make a treaty with their king, and, with other external powers, to attack the districts which remained loyal to Egypt. In vain did Rib-Addi send touching appeals for aid to the distant Pharaoh, who was far too much engaged in his religious innovations to attend to such messages. What most interests us is the mention of troublesome invaders called some times _sa-gas_ (a Babylonian ideogram meaning "robber"), sometimes Habiri. Who are these Habiri? Not, as was at first thought by some, specially the Israelites, but all those tribes of land-hungry nomads ("Hebrews") who were attracted by the wealth and luxury of the settled regions, and sought to appropriate it for themselves. Among these we may include not only the Israelites or tribes which afterwards became Israelitish, but the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites. We meet with the Habiri in north Syria. Itakkama writes thus to the Pharaoh,[11] "Behold, Namyawaza has surrendered all the cities of the king, my lord, to the SA-GAS in the land of Kadesh and in Ubi. But I will go, and if thy gods and thy sun go before me, I will bring back the cities to the king, my lord, from the Habiri, to show myself subject to him; and I will expel the SA-GAS." Similarly Zimrida, king of Sidon, declares, "All my cities which the king has given into my hand, have come into the hand of the Habiri."[12] Nor had Palestine any immunity from the Arabian invaders. The king of _Jerusalem_, Abd-Hiba, the second part of whose name has been thought to represent the Hebrew Yahweh,[13] reports thus to the Pharaoh, "If (Egyptian) troops come this year, lands and princes will remain to the king, my lord; but if troops come not, these lands and princes will not remain to the king, my lord."[14] Abd-Hiba's chief trouble arose from persons called Milkili and the sons of Lapaya, who are said to have entered into a treasonable league with the Habiri. Apparently this restless warrior found his death at the siege of Gina.[15] All these princes, however, malign each other in their letters to the Pharaoh, and protest their own innocence of traitorous intentions. Namyawaza, for instance, whom Itakkama (see above) accuses of disloyalty, writes thus to the Pharaoh, "Behold, I and my warriors and my chariots, together with my brethren and my SA-GAS, and my Suti[16] are at the disposal of the (royal) troops, to go whithersoever the king, my lord, commands."[17] This petty prince, therefore, sees no harm in having a band of Arabians for his garrison, as indeed Hezekiah long afterwards had his Urbi to help him against Sennacherib.

From the same period we have recently derived fresh and important evidence as to pre-Israelitish Palestine. As soon as the material gathered is large enough to be thoroughly classified and critically examined, a true history of early Palestine will be within measurable distance. At present, there are five places whence the new evidence has been obtained: 1. Tell-el-Hasy, generally identified with the Lachish of the Old Testament. Excavations were made here in 1890-1892 by Flinders Petrie and Bliss. 2. Gezer, plausibly identified with the Gezer of I Kings ix. 16. Here R.A.S. Macalister began excavating in 1902. 3. Tell-es-Safy, possibly the Gath of the Old Testament, 6 m. from Eleutheropolis. Here F.J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister made some discoveries in 1899-1900. A complete examination of the site, however, was impossible. 4. Tell-el-Mutasellim, near Lejjun (Megiddo-Legio). Schumacher began working here in 1903 for the German Palestine Society. 5. Taannek, on the south of the plain of Esdraelon. Here Prof. Ernst Sellin of Vienna was able to do much in a short time (1902-1904). It may be mentioned here that on the first of these sites a cuneiform tablet belonging to the Amarna series was discovered; at Gezer, a deed of sale; at Tell-el-Hasy the remains of a Babylonian stele, three seals, and three cylinders with Babylonian mythological representations; at Tell-el-Mutasellim, a seal bearing a Babylonian legend, and at Taannek, twelve tablets and fragments of tablets were found near the fragments of the terracotta box in which they were stored. It is a remarkable fact that the kings or chiefs of the neighbourhood should have used Babylonian cuneiform in their own official correspondence. But much beside tablets has been found on these sites; primitive sanctuaries, for instance. The splendid alignment of monoliths at Gezer is described in detail in _P.E.F. Quart. Statement_, January 1903, p. 23, and July 1903, p. 219. There is reason, as Macalister thinks, to believe that it is the result of a gradual development, beginning with two small pillars, and gradually enlarging by later additions. There is a smaller one at Tell-es-Safy. The Semitic cult of sacred standing stones is thus proved to be of great antiquity; Sellin's discoveries at Taannek and those of Bliss at Tell-es-Safy fully confirm this. Rock-hewn altars have also been found, illustrating the prohibition in Ex. xx. 25, 26, and numerous jars with the skeletons of infants. We cannot doubt that the sacrificing of children was practised on a large scale among the Canaanites. Their chief deity was Ashtart (Astarte), the goddess of fertility. Numerous images of her have been found, but none of the god Baal. The types of the divine form vary in the different places. The other images which have been found represent Egyptian deities. We must not, however, infer that there was a large Egyptian element in the Canaanitish Pantheon. What the images do prove is the large amount of intercourse between Egypt and Canaan, and the presence of Egyptians in the subject country.

See the _Tell-el-Amarna Letters_, ed. by Winckler, with translation (1896); the reports of Macalister in the Pal. Expl. Fund Statements from 1903 onwards; Sellin's report of excavations at Tell Ta'annek; also H.W. Hogg, "Recent Assyriology," &c., in _Inaugural Lectures_ ed. by Prof. A.S. Peake (Manchester University, 1905). On Biblical questions, see Dillmann's commentaries and the Bible dictionaries. See further articles PALESTINE; JEWS. (T. K. C.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Enarralio in Psalm civ._

[2] W.M. Muller, _Asien und Europa, _p. 205.

[3] The letters are written in the official and diplomatic language--Babylonian, though "Canaanitish" words and idioms are not wanting.

[4] _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, _p. 181.

[5] These explanations are endorsed by Driver _ (Genesis, on _Gen. x.).

[6] See the relevant articles in _Ency. Bib. _and Cheyne's _Genesis and Exodus._

[7] For the grounds of these dates see Winckler, _Gesch. Isr._ i. 127 f.; Paton, _Early Hist. of Syria and Palestine_ (1902), pp. 6-8, 25-28.

[8] It is true the Babylonians themselves interpreted the name differently (5 R. 44 a b 21), _kimta rapashtum_, "wide family." That, however, is only a natural protest against what we may call Canaanism or Arabism.

[9] See Cheyne, _Genesis and Exodus_ (on Gen. i. 26), and cf. G.A. Cooke, _N. Sem. Inscriptions_ (e.g. pp. 30-40, on Eshmunazar's inscription).

[10] See _Amarna Letters_, Winckler's edition, No. 7.

[11] _Op. cit._ No. 146.

[12] _Op. cit._ No. 147.

[13] Johns, _Assyrian Deeds_, iii. p. 16.

[14] _Amarna Letters_, No. 180 (xi. 20-24).

[15] _Ibid._ No. 164 (xi. 15-18).

[16] Nomads of the Syrian desert.

[17] _Amarna Letters_, No. 144 (xi. 24-32).

CANACHUS, a sculptor of Sicyon in Achaea, of the latter part of the 6th century B.C. He was especially noted as the author of two great statues of Apollo, one in bronze made for the temple at Miletus, and one in cedar wood made for Thebes. The coins of Miletus furnish us with copies of the former and show the god to have held a stag in, one hand and a bow in the other. The rigidity of these works naturally impressed later critics.

CANADA. The Dominion of Canada comprises the northern half of the continent of North America and its adjacent islands, excepting Alaska, which belongs to the United States, and Newfoundland, still a separate colony of the British empire. Its boundary on the south is the parallel of latitude 49 deg., between the Pacific Ocean and Lake-of-the-Woods, then a chain of small lakes and rivers eastward to the mouth of Pigeon river on the north-west side of Lake Superior, and the Great Lakes with their connecting rivers to Cornwall, on the St Lawrence. From this eastward to the state of Maine the boundary is an artificial line nearly corresponding to lat. 45 deg.; then an irregular line partly determined by watersheds and rivers divides Canada from Maine, coming out on the Bay of Fundy. The western boundary is the Pacific on the south, an irregular line a few miles inland from the coast along the "pan handle" of Alaska to Mount St Elias, and the meridian of 141 deg. to the Arctic Ocean. A somewhat similar relationship cuts off Canada from the Atlantic on the east, the north-eastern coast of Labrador belonging to Newfoundland.

_Physical Geography._--In spite of these restrictions of its natural coast line on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, Canada is admirably provided with harbours on both oceans. The Gulf of St Lawrence with its much indented shores and the coast of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick supply endless harbours, the northern ones closed by ice in the winter, but the southern ones open all the year round; and on the Pacific British Columbia is deeply fringed with islands and fjords with well-sheltered harbours everywhere, in strong contrast with the unbroken shore of the United States to the south. The long stretches of sheltered navigation from the Straits of Belle Isle north of Newfoundland to Quebec, and for 600 m. on the British Columbian coast, are of great advantage for the coasting trade. The greatly varied Arctic coast line of Canada with its large islands, inlets and channels is too much clogged with ice to be of much practical use, but Hudson Bay, a mediterranean sea 850 m. long from north to south and 600 m. wide, with its outlet Hudson Strait, has long been navigated by trading ships and whalers, and may become a great outlet for the wheat of western Canada, though closed by ice except for four months in the summer. Of the nine provinces of Canada only three have no coast line on salt water, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the first may soon be extended to Hudson Bay. Ontario has a seaboard only on Hudson Bay's southern extension, James Bay, and there is no probability that the shallow harbours of the latter bay will ever be of much importance for shipping, though Churchill Harbour on the west side of Hudson Bay may become an important grain port. What Ontario lacks in salt water navigation is, however, made up by the busy traffic of the Great Lakes.

Geology.

The physical features of Canada are comparatively simple, and drawn on a large scale, more than half of its surface sloping gently inwards towards the shallow basin of Hudson Bay, with higher margins to the south-east and south-west. In the main it is a broad trough, wider towards the north than towards the south, and unsymmetrical, Hudson Bay occupying much of its north-eastern part, while to the west broad plains rise gradually to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, the eastern member of the Cordillera which follows the Pacific coast of America. The physical geography of Canada is so closely bound up with its geology that at least an outline of the geological factors involved in its history is necessary to understand the present physiography. The mountain structures originated in three great orogenic periods, the earliest in the Archean, the second at the end of the Palaeozoic and the third at the end of the Mesozoic. The Archean mountain chains, which enclosed the present region of Hudson Bay, were so ancient that they had already been worn down almost to a plain before the early Palaeozoic sediments were laid down. This ruling geological and physical feature of the North American continent has been named by E. Suess the "Canadian Shield." Round it the Palaeozoic sands and clays, largely derived from its own waste, were deposited as nearly horizontal beds, in many places still almost undisturbed. Later the sediments lying to the south-east of this "protaxis," or nucleus of the continent, were pushed against its edge and raised into the Appalachian chain of mountains, which, however, extends only a short distance into Canada. The Mesozoic sediments were almost entirely laid down to the west and south-west of the protaxis, upon the flat-lying Palaeozoic rocks, and in the prairie region they are still almost horizontal; but in the Cordillera they have been thrust up into the series of mountain chains characterizing the Pacific coast region. The youngest of these mountain chains is naturally the highest, and the oldest one in most places no longer rises to heights deserving the name of mountains. Owing to this unsymmetric development of North America the main structural watershed is towards its western side, on the south coinciding with the Rocky Mountains proper, but to the northward falling back to ranges situated further west in the same mountain region. The great central area of Canada is drained towards Hudson Bay, but its two largest rivers have separate watersheds, the Mackenzie flowing north-west to the Arctic Ocean and the St Lawrence north-east towards the Atlantic, the one to the south-west and the other to the south-east of the Archean protaxis. While these ancient events shaped the topography in a broad way, its final development was comparatively recent, during the glacial period, when the loose materials were scoured from some regions and spread out as boulder clay, or piled up as moraines in others; and the original water-ways were blocked in many places. The retreat of the ice left Canada much in its present condition except for certain post-glacial changes of level which seem to be still in progress. For this reason the region has a very youthful topography with innumerable lakes and waterfalls as evidence that the rivers have not long been at work. The uneven carving down of the older mountain systems, especially that of the Archean pro taxis, and the disorderly scattering of glacial material provide most of the lake basins so characteristic of Canada.

_Lakes and Rivers._--As a result of the geological causes just mentioned many parts of Canada are lavishly strewn with lakes of all sizes and shapes, from bodies of water hundreds of miles long and a thousand feet deep to ponds lost to sight in the forest. Thousands of these lakes have been mapped more or less carefully, and every new survey brings to light small lakes hitherto unknown to the white man. For numbers they can be compared only with those of Finland and Scandinavia in Europe, and for size with those of eastern Africa; but for the great extent of lake-filled country there is no comparison. From the map it will be noticed that the largest and most thickly strewn lakes occur within five hundred or a thousand miles of Hudson Bay, and belong to the Archean protaxis or project beyond its edges into the Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks which lean against it. The most famous of the lakes are those of the St Lawrence system, which form part of the southern boundary of Canada and are shared with the United States; but many others have the right to be called "Great Lakes" from their magnitude. There are nine others which have a length of more than 100 m., and thirty-five which are more than 50 m. long. Within the Archean protaxis they are of the most varied shapes, since they represent merely portions of the irregular surface inundated by some morainic dam at the lowest point. Comparatively few have simple outlines and an unbroken surface of water, the great majority running into long irregular bays and containing many islands, sometimes even thousands in number, as in Georgian Bay and Lake-of-the-Woods. In the Cordilleran region on the other hand the lakes are long, narrow and deep, in reality sections of mountain valleys occupied by fresh water, just as the fjords of the adjoining coast are valleys occupied by the sea. The lakes of the different regions present the same features as the nearest sea coasts but on a smaller scale. The majority of the lakes have rocky shores and islands and great variety of depth, many of the smaller ones, however, are rimmed with marshes and are slowly filling up with vegetable matter, ultimately becoming peat bogs, the _muskegs_ of the Indian. Most of Canada is so well watered that the lakes have outlets and are kept fresh, but there are a few small lakes in southern Saskatchewan, e.g. the Quill and Old Wives lakes, in regions arid enough to require no outlets. In such cases the waters are alkaline, and contain various salts in solution which are deposited as a white rim round the basin towards the end of the summer when the amount of water has been greatly reduced by evaporation. It is interesting to find maritime plants, such as the samphire, growing on their shores a thousand miles from the sea and more than a thousand feet above it. In many cases the lakes of Canada simply spill over at the lowest point from one basin into the next below, making chains of lakes with no long or well-defined channels between, since in so young a country there has not yet been time for the rivers to have carved wide valleys. Thus canoe navigation may be carried on for hundreds of miles, with here and there a waterfall or a rapid requiring a portage of a few hundred yards or at most a mile or two. The river systems are therefore in many cases complex and tortuous, and very often the successive connecting links between the lakes receive different names. The best example of this is the familiar one of the St Lawrence, which may be said to begin as Nipigon river and to take the names St Mary's, St Clair, Detroit and Niagara, before finally flowing from Lake Ontario to the sea under its proper name. As these lakes are great reservoirs and settling basins, the rivers which empty them are unusually steady in level and contain beautifully clear water. The St Lawrence varies only a few feet in the year and always has pellucid bluish-green water, while the Mississippi, whose tributaries begin only a short distance south of the Great Lakes, varies 40 ft. or more between high- and low-water and is loaded with mud. The St Lawrence is far the most important Canadian river from the historic and economic points of view, since it provided the main artery of exploration in early days, and with its canals past rapids and between lakes still serves as a great highway of trade between the interior of the continent and the seaports of Montreal and Quebec. It is probable that politically Canada would have followed the course of the States to the south but for the planting of a French colony with widely extended trading posts along the easily ascended channel of the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes, so that this river was the ultimate bond of union between Canada and the empire.

North of the divide between the St Lawrence system and Hudson Bay there are many large rivers converging on that inland sea, such as Whale river, Big river, East Main, Rupert and Nottaway rivers coming in from Ungava and northern Quebec; Moose and Albany rivers with important tributaries from northern Ontario; and Severn, Nelson and Churchill rivers from the south-west. All of these are rapid and shallow, affording navigation only for canoes; but the largest of them, Nelson river, drains the great Manitoban lakes, Winnipeg, Winnipegosis and Manitoba, which are frequented by steamers, and receive the waters of Lake-of-the-Woods, Lake Seul and many others emptying into Winnipeg river from Ontario; of Red river coming in from the United States to the south; and of the southern parts of the Rocky Mountains and the western prairie provinces drained by the great Saskatchewan river. The parallel of 49 deg. approximately separates the Saskatchewan waters from the streams going south to the Missouri, though a few small tributaries of the latter river begin on Canadian territory.