"were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands." The most crowded march, however, must have been that taken up by the sons of Tiras, and Gomer, and Ashkenaz, by way of Thrace, and the mid regions of Europe. We have one proof of this in the name given to the famous crossing-place between Europe and Asia. It was called by an oriental word denoting the _passage of flocks and herds_, and hence, to the thousands and tens of thousands who constantly gathered on its banks, it was the _Bosphorus_ (bo-os, poros), the _Ox-ford_ or ox-ferry--a most notable spot in the world's early emigration, the name of which the Greeks afterward translated into their own tongue, and then, according to their usual custom, invented, or accommodated, for its explanation, the mythus of the wandering Io. But still, through all these channels, it was _ever westward_, ever from the rising and toward the setting sun. It may be a matter of curious interest to note how the word itself seems to have moved onward with the march of mankind. The far-off, unknown land, for the time being, was ever _the West_--departing farther and farther from the terminus which each succeeding age had placed, and continually receding from the emigrant, like Hesperia (the _West_ of the Æneid) ever flying before the wearied Trojans-- Oras Hesperiæ semper fugientis. In the very earliest notices of sacred history, Canaan was the _West_. When Abraham arrived there from Ur of the Chaldees, he found the pioneers had gone before him. "The Canaanites," it is said, "were already in the land," although soon to give way to a more heaven-favored race. Next the coast of the Philistines becomes the _West_. Then the Great Sea, or the Mediterranean, with its stronghold of Tyre, as it is called, Joshua xix. 29. Tyre, the ancient Gibraltar, "the entry of the waters" (Ezek. xxvii. 1), and which was to be "the merchant of the people for many isles." In this way the language derived its fixed name for this quarter of the horizon. As the north is called by a word meaning the _dark or hidden_ place, so the sea ever denotes the west. Hence the Psalmist's method of expressing the immensity of the Divine presence; "Should I take the wings of the morning (or the east) and dwell in the parts beyond the sea," or the uttermost _west_, "even then shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand still shall hold me." In the next period, the _west_ is removed to the land of Chittim (Gen. x. 4), or the modern isle of Cyprus, of which there is a city yet remaining with the radicals of the ancient name. Among other places it is mentioned, Isaiah xxiii. 1. "News from the land of Chittim," or, "From the land of Chittim is it revealed unto them," says the prophet in his account of the wide-spread commerce of Tyre. It would almost seem like a modern bulletin from San Francisco and California. Soon, however, the ever retiring terminus is to be found in the country of Caphtor (Jeremiah xlvii.