13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen armed and _trained_ servants who had been born in his own household. This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name given to its eponym in Chap. X.: ARPHAXAD (more correctly ARPHAKSHAD), corrupted from AREPH-KASDIM, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans," or perhaps "boundaries"--in the sense of "land"--of the Chaldeans. Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near which the tribe dwelt many years. 14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi. 31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter does not admit of more than guesses--of which something hereafter.