73 
REMARKS BY THE REY. CANON TRISTRAM, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 
CANAAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN, WITH REFERENCE TO THE LIGHT 
THROWN BY RECENT RESEARCH ON THE MovEeMEntTS oF THE Hirrires.— 
A casual observer might go through the land of Canaan, from Dan to 
Beersheba, and see not a vestige that could recall the story of a buried past 
beyond the epoch of the struggles of the Crusades. But take the spade and 
turn up the soil that hardly hides the form and outline of some buried 
monument of man’s former industry, and then listen round the camp-fire to 
the stories and traditions of the simple fellaheen, the natives of the district,— 
light soon dawns on many an obscure allusion of history. Some name, last 
written down, perhaps, in the Doomsday Book of Joshua, and never since 
recurring in the registers of the nation, strikes the ear, and imparts freshness 
and reality to what might have seemed a musty record, as it comes from the 
lips of an untaught peasant, to whom that name has come down from his 
fathers through the lapse of four thousand years. Thus, as the eye of the 
Bible student looks on Palestine to-day, he clothes the narratives of the past 
with the surroundings of the present. Now, the first glimpse which history 
gives of the land of Canaan is to be found in the story of the wanderings of 
Abraham and the pastoral patriarchs. 
What the land must then have appeared to the travellers from the East 
we may infer from examining the fragments, scarcely touched by the profane 
hands of the builder or the colonist, which remain in the eastern parts of the 
country in Gilead and Bashan. From Damascus to Egypt there are but two 
towns of any importance,—Es, Salt (Ramoth-gilead) and Kirak, the ancient 
Kir, or Kir Moab. These and a few villages comprise the whole settled 
population. No terraces scarp the hill-sides. Only here and there are the 
open plains disturbed by the plough. Scattered timber, more park-like than 
forest, clothes the mountain in irregular clumps from base to summit. The 
date palm still waves in the Jordan valley, on the east side. The Balm-of- 
Gilead, the arbutus, sweet bay, and oleaster, cover the lower ranges. Above 
them, as we ascend, we find the olive ; higher up the evergreen oak or ilex, 
then the Turkey oak ; while clumps of pine, about identical with the Scotch 
fir, crown the summit of Gilead. In the open glades the nomad Arab 
pitches his black tent, while his flocks and herds, camels, sheep, and goats, 
with a few horned cattle, depasture the neighbourhood, and disturb the 
gazelles and deer which at other times browse unmolested. The only cul- 
tivated land consists of unfenced patches round the towns and villages. 
Such must have been the character and such the inhabitants of western 
Canaan when Abram first pitched in the plain of Shechem. — Fair 
indeed, and lovely, must that land of promise have looked to the 
eyes of the pilgrims just come from the bare and monotonous plains of 
Mesopotamia, as they threaded its labyrinth of well-wooded hills and narrow 
