22 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



passes from one island to another across comparatively shallow seas. 

 Several plants and animals are common to both hemispheres. 

 The probability of a belt of land connecting Europe with Labrador 

 opens up an interesting question of the migration of man from 

 Europe into America, and that of the Hittites might have been 

 one of them. 



We see from what has been said that the Hittites appeared as a 

 very powerful people in very early times, and that they were a real 

 power, and at one time had contested the empire of Western Asia 

 with the Egyptians. The age of Hittite supremacy belongs to an 

 earlier date than the conquest of Canaan by the Children of Israel. 

 Before that period the Hittites are mentioned who lived in the 

 extreme south of Palestine. Abraham bought the cave of Macpelah 

 at Hebron, and Esau married Judith, daughter of Beeri, a Hittite, 

 and a daughter also of Elon, a Hittite. In later times Uriah the 

 Hittite was one of the chief officers of David. The inscriptions of 

 Egypt and Assyria show that they once played a leading and im- 

 portant part in the history of the civilized East. On the Egyptian 

 monuments they are called Kheta, on those of Assyria Khatta, both 

 words being equivalents of the Hebrew Kheth and Khitti. A 

 discovery has recently been made which throws a light upon the 

 history of the East in the century before the Exodus. A large 

 collection of clay-tablets has been found on the eastern bank of the 

 Nile similar to those from the mounds of Nineveh and Babylonia. 

 We learn from them that the Hittites were already pressing south- 

 ward and causing alarm to the Egyptians. One of the tablets is a 

 dispatch from Northern Syria praying the Egyptian king to send 

 assistance as soon as possible. The Egyptian generals found them- 

 selves no match for the Hittite armies. Rameses I. was compelled 

 to conclude a treaty with the Hittite king, and thus to recognise 

 that the Hittite power was on an equality with that of Egypt. 



It will, I think, be conceded from what has been already said 

 that the accuracy of the Bible has been remarkably corroborated by 

 independent, and in some cases inimical, testimony such as that of 

 Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hittite. I agree with Mr. Gladstone that 



