THE SHEMITIC RACE. 469 



the Black Sea, and flow into the Persian Gulf. On 

 the right is a desert extending to the Nile ; on the 

 left, a chain of hills. A shepherd people descended 

 from the plateau, occupied the land between the rivers, 

 the plains between the Tigris and the hills, and the 

 alluvial regions at the lower course of the Euphrates. 

 They wandered over the Arabian desert with their 

 flocks and herds, settled in Canaan and Yemen, crossed 

 over into Africa, extended along its northern shores as 

 far as the Atlantic, overspread the Sahara, and made 

 border wars upon Soudan. In the course of many 

 centuries the various branches of this people diverged 

 from one another. In Barbary and Sahara they were 

 called Berbers ; in the valley of the Nile, Egyptians ; 

 Arabs, in the desert and in Yemen ; Canaanites, in 

 Palestine ; Assyrians, in Mesopotamia and the upper 

 regions of the Tigris; Chaldaeans or Babylonians, in the 

 lower course of the Euphrates. The Canaanites, the 

 Arabs of Yemen, and the Berbers of Algeria adopted 

 agricultural habits and lived in towns ; the Berbers 

 of Sahara, the Bedouins of the Syro- Arabian desert, 

 and of the waste regions in Assyria remained a 

 pastoral and wandering people. But in Chaldaea 

 and in Egypt, the colonists were placed under 

 peculiar conditions. Famines impelled the shep- 

 herds to make war on other tribes ; famines impelled 

 the Chaldaeans and Egyptians to contend with the 

 Euphrates and the Nile, to domesticate the waters, 

 to store them in reservoirs, and to distribute them, 

 as required, upon the fields. It is not improbable 

 that the Egyptians were men of Babylonia driven by 

 war or by exile into the African deserts ; that they 

 were composed of two noble classes, the priests and the 

 military men ; that they took with them some know- 



