Salt Lake is eighty miles long and about forty miles wide. The Land of Canaan is about twice as long and twice as wide; or in extreme length about one hundred seventy miles, and its width about eighty. The City of Dan was in the northern part, and Beersheba in the southern part; so when you hear the expression "from Dan to Beersheba," you will know that it once denoted the entire length of the land of Canaan. [Sidenote: Sea of Galilee.] The fresh water lake, of the Holy Land, also has several names. It is known generally as the "Sea of Galilee;" but it is also called "Sea of Tiberias," "Lake of Gennesareth," "Lake of Tiberias," and the "Sea of Cenneroth." It is about sixteen miles long and six miles wide. "The waters of this lake lie in a deep basin, surrounded on all sides with lofty hills, excepting only the narrow entrance and outlet of the Jordan at each extreme. * * * The appearance of this sea from the town of Capernaum, which is situated near the upper end of the bank on the western side, is extremely grand; its greatest length runs nearly north and south. The barren aspect of the mountains on each side, and the total absence of wood give, however, a cast of dullness to the picture, which is increased to melancholy by the dead calm of its waters." On the west side of this lake was one of the important divisions of Palestine, called Galilee. One ancient writer says that at one time this province "contained two hundred and four cities and towns, the least of which contained fifteen thousand inhabitants." [1] [Sidenote: Bethsaida.] Somewhere in this province, probably very near Capernaum, was a little town called Bethsaida. There was another town by this name on the north-eastern shore, but it is the Bethsaida, near Capernaum, in which we are now most interested. To must have been near the lake, because many of the men who lived there made their living by fishing, not with poles and hooks and lines, as the boys fish for trout in our mountain streams, but with nets, which they let down from their boats, and with which they dragged the lake until they would entangle the fish, which they then hauled to shore. [Sidenote: Simon.] In one of these fishermen's homes, probably a few years before the Savior's birth, was born one day, a little baby boy whom his parents named Simon or Simeon. He had a brother named Andrew. [2] Their father's name was Jonas or Johanna, but very little is known about him, and nothing about their mother. [Sidenote: Simon's Home and Boyhood.]