Samaria, became more enriched than any other city of the Hebrews, by the transit of commerce through it from the coast to the eastern route. And probably the city of Dan participated in the prosperity arising from the traffic of the northern road.

These circumstances, probably, acerbated the hatred of the Jerusalemite priesthood against the calves of Jeroboam, which had become the emblems of wealth, if not of the concord by which it was acquired.

It was by commerce that Petra and Babylon, Damascus and Hamath, and the maritime cities had grown rich; while Jerusalem sat envious amid her almost unapproachable hills, and dreaming with Isaiah (lx. 6, 9): "The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of Adoni. . . . Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of Adoni thy god."

But the camels and dromedaries never learnt to ascend the mountains of Judah with frankincense or gold. The Jerusalemites waited in vain for the ships of Tarshish which never waited on Adoni. Their wiser progeny, as wealth would not come to their mountains, descended from the mountains to seek it in Tarshish (Spain) and wherever else it can be found.

CHAPTER III.

POPULATION OF THE HEBREW LAND.

THE preceding account of the area and character of the Hebrew land has been prepared for the purpose of enabling the reader to form his own judgment as to the credibility of the scriptural statements of the numbers and wealth of its people. If convinced that these statements are absolutely incredible, that they are mere fictions, he will suspect also that other statements in Scripture are of a similar character, and alike undeserving of being accepted as statements of fact; indeed, that they are, when alike violating the order of nature, mere Oriental tales.

It should be premised that the Hebrews never constituted the entire population of Palestine or Gilead. In many localities the descendants of the indigenous population predominated. There were few, if any, of unmixed Hebrew blood. The kings were not. The entire population must be regarded as a mixed race, in which probably the Hebrew element in Palestine prevailed to about the same extent as the Norman in England, among those of the Britons, Angles, Saxons, and Danes.

England, at the present time, after freedom from any serious invasion for nearly eight centuries, and from any serious civil war for two centuries, and comparatively lightly affected by its foreign wars, and not heavily by its emigrations,-a country with a vastly greater proportion of cultivatable land than the Hebrew regions, with a capital of which the inhabitants are to be counted by millions, and with towns of which the residents are to be counted, in actual census, by hundreds of thousands and by tens of thousands, and teeming with a manufacturing and mineralworking, in addition to an agricultural, population,-after a long term of domestic quiet and commercial prosperity, bears a population averaging about 400 to the square mile (sec post, p. 46); and it

cannot sustain that population without importations of food from foreign countries. What then is the population which the Hebrew land could from time to time-what could it in the time of its highest prosperity, then purchasing all its gold and luxuries by the exportation of food-have possibly sustained? It could not have found food for the fabulous millions of the exode from Egypt, if the whole land had been delivered up to their exclusive enjoyment in the highest state of culture.

Setting off, against the greater proportion of the deserts, wildernesses, and lofty barren mountains of Palestine and Gilead, the greater productiveness of some of its plains and valleys; even assuming that such productiveness would further compensate for our importations, and making allowance for the feebler appetites of warmer climates, it is an extreme concession to admit that the Hebrew land could have, at any time, sustained so great an average population as the present average of England. It must be borne in mind that it was not a rice-producing country, and that it was not so warm as the rice-producing districts of India; and that consequently, neither the abundance of produce, nor the little required for the subsistence of each individual, can be justly compared with those of Bengal.

On the assumption that the Hebrew land could bear in its times of peace, general industry, and prosperity, as large an average population as the crowded realm of England in this day, 400 to the square mile, the greatest population which could have been sustained by the regions in which the Hebrews had settled, was (ante, p. 16)—

Gilead. length, 60 m.; breadth, 20 m.; area, 1,200 sq. m. × 400 =
Samaria and Galilee (see p. 16)
Judah. length, 45 m.; breadth, 30 m.;

Total of Hebrew land

of all races, ages, and sexes.

480,000

3,120
1,350

=

= 1,248,000

= 540,000

On the ordinary estimate, the number of men capable of bearing arms would be about one-fifth, producing for Gilead 96,000, for Israel 249,600, and for Judah 108,000, a total of 453,600, nearly 150,000 less than the number contained in the tale of the Egyptian exode. But no such proportion of the population could be brought into the field. We may form some estimate of the numbers which could be marshalled, from the arming of France in the recent war, a nation inspired with a military ardour not surpassed by any, and

if possible, still more excited by hatred of the invader, roused throughout its length and breadth by these sentiments, and by the shame as well as the danger of being conquered; with means. and wealth to purchase and provide the weapons and munitions of war, with the most vigorous levyings upon its energies, did not produce out of its nearly 40,000,000 a twentieth of its numbers to encounter the German hosts. Upon this scale, we cannot estimate the numbers available in the Hebrew lands, in their highest prosperity, for war, at more than for Gilead 24,000, for Israel or Samaria 62,400, and for Judah 27,000, a total of David's kingdom, in its highest possible state of prosperity, amounting to 113,400, even to repel an invasion which the whole country was combined to meet.

But comparatively small as these numbers appear to be, they immensely exceed any amount of population which could have ever existed, including all the peoples of all races, Hebrew and earlier, in these regions.

The character of these regions greatly resembled that of Wales, in mountains, valleys, and plains. Wales considerably exceeded them in extent. Wales and Hebrew land were in their early times alike desolated by internal and border wars.

The Galilees were much more productive than Wales, but not so the rest of those regions, the infertile lands of Judah averaging with the more productive of Gilead and Samaria. The staples of both countries were sheep and corn. By far the larger portion of Gilead and South Palestine was sheep pasture, as in Wales. If the climate were more favourable in the former, it was compensated in the latter by scarcely ever-failing springs; and its pastures were luxuriant, at times when those of almost all the Hebrew land were parched and dry.

Moreover the mineral produce of Wales, of which Hebrew land had none, provides the means of purchasing from abroad sustentation for many people; and the seaports of Wales, of which Hebrew land had none, produce a wealth and population of which the Hebrew land was utterly deficient.

Until the time of Herod and the Romans, Hebrew land had not a dozen populous towns, from Dan to Beersheba, and from Ramoth-Gilead to the Mediterranean. It had cities by hundreds or by thousands, but they were, for the most part, little villages or farmsteads on the tops of the mountains, with inhabitants enough to manage the sheep and the goats of the neighbourhood, and a few cornfields and orchards.

In addition to this sort of city, in abundance Wales has towns, each sufficient to enormously outnumber the collected populations in such places as Jerusalem and Shechem, and many to spare: among them, according to the Census of 1871, within the limits of the boroughs, Cardiff, 39,536; Merthyr Tydvil, 51,949; Pembroke, 13,704; and Swansea, 51,702; to be compared with Jerusalem, at the utmost perhaps 15,000, and Samaria probably somewhat more populous. Hebrew land had not a manufacture to compare with even the small factories of Welsh flannel.

The stories about the enormous productiveness of this land of mountains, with a slender proportion of very fertile plains and valleys, are, when examined, about as credible as that of 3,000,000 people feeding upon manna for forty years. According to the Census of 1851, the average population of Wales was only 123 persons of all ages and sexes to the square mile.

Scotland had only 92 to the square mile.

Ireland (then crowded with an almost starving population),

226.

Belgium (highly cultivated), 382.

Holland, 382.

Austria, 145.

France, then flourishing, 171 to the square mile.

Taking everything favourable to Hebrew land into account, it could not have had, in its time of greatest prosperity, more than half the population, which, on our preceding calculations, we have ascribed to it.

By this computation, the population could not have exceeded in Gilead, 240,000; in Israel, 624,000; and in Judah, 270,000; making together, 1,134,000 of all ages, races, and sexes, for the whole Hebrew land. This would afford for available armies, even for defence, not more than about, Gilead, 12,000; Israel, 31,200; and Judah, 13,500; in all, 56,700, for the entire Hebrew realms.

A moving mass of immigrants, where the whole sought another settlement, might of course be estimated at a higher figure, as almost all the males able to bear arms would be counted among the fighting-men.

The consideration of the story of the 600,000 manna-fed warriors who marched across the Jordan, is reserved for a future page.

When in the sequel we shall have partially relieved the credible from the myths with which it is encumbered, the residuum will represent something more conformable with such reduced numbers.