"And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge, concerning these things, let us remember Him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. But great are the promises of the Lord unto they who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren. For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to His will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all they who have been broken off, wherefore He remembereth us also." That we may better understand the various partial and subsequent general captivities of Israel and Judah, the following short statement thereof is here inserted. The dates given are those of the commonly accepted chronology: Pul, or Sardanapalus, imposed a tribute on Menahen, king of Israel, about 770 B. C. Tiglath Pileser carried away the tribes living east of the Jordan and in Galilee, B. C. 740. Shalamaneser twice invaded the kingdom of Israel, took Samaria, after three years' siege, and carried the people captive to Assyria B. C. 721. Sennacherib (B. C. 713) is stated to have carried 200,000 captives into Assyria from the Jewish cities that he captured. Nebuchadnezzar, in the first half of his reign (B. C. 605-562), repeatedly invaded Judea, besieged Jerusalem and carried its inhabitants to Babylon. The next question that presents itself is, to what portion of the land of Assyria were the Israelitish captives taken. Scripture has not left us in the dark on this point. Both the book of Chronicles (_I Chron. v: 26_) and the book of Kings (_II Kings xxvii: 6_) give us the needed information. In the latter book it is stated (and the statement in the book of Chronicles is almost identical therewith), that the king of Assyria "carried Israel away captive into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Harbor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." Media, the land of the Medes, lay to the north of Assyria proper, embracing the country lying on the southern border of the Caspian Sea, as far west as the River Araxes. The exact location of Halah and Harbor has long since been lost sight of and the only river that to-day, in name, bears any affinity to the Gozan is the Kuzal Ozan, which empties into the Caspian Sea to the south-east of the Araxes. CHAPTER III. _The Land of the North--Jeremiah, Ether and Esdras' Testimonies-The course of the Israelites Northward--The Jordan, the Don, the Danube, etc.--The Land of Mæsia and Dacia--The Cetae--Zalmoxes_.