THE HUMAN SPECIES. 355 



is detected, because the confluence of nations moving 

 westward, obliged concentration at the isthmus, in 

 order to reach the lower Nile, and in this manner they 

 became conversant with each other's discoveries in the 

 arts of life, and saw the dawn of commerce opening by 

 the mariners of Sidon. 



Whether the Imilikon, or Amalekites, were of the 

 same mixed stem, does not clearly appear ; but that 

 the Phoenicians, Punes, Fynes, so far as the master 

 tribes are concerned, were Finns, is exceedingly pro- 

 bable, since a red-haired race necessarily must have 

 come from the northern parts of Asia ; and if the lan- 

 guage they spoke was in the historical era almost a 

 pure Hebrew, the cause is easily discovered, since a 

 white community, of no great strength, had gradually 

 increased to a series of cities, whereof the vast supe- 

 riority of inhabitants were Semitics and southern 

 strangers, who from the period of the first conquest 

 of Phoenicia, acquired political power ; whereas, until 

 then, they had perhaps only possessed a certain pre- 

 eminence in the refinements of civilization. The Phoe- 

 nician power was long settled before the arrival of the 

 Hebrews in Palestine, and it was not regarded by 

 them in the same light as the upland tribes of Canaan, 

 since political and commercial alliance, and permanent 

 peace, existed between the two states; conditions 

 which could not have been maintained if the Punic 

 race had not been of a very distinct origin from the 

 Canaanite. 



