Previous to any epoch settled by positive history, the Canaanites, or Phoenicians, a highly civilized nation, dwelt in the land called Palestine. They were an elderly branch of the Shemitic family; their generic name embracing the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Girgasites--all of whom the Greeks called _Phoenicians_. _Canaan_, in the Shemitic dialects, signifies "lowland," as was Palestine, in contradistinction to _Aram_, or the highlands of Mesopotamia (_Naharajim_, _Nahirim_ of the Old Testament). _Canaan_, in Hebrew proper, is sometimes synonymous with "merchant;" and the historical development of the Phoenicians explains and justifies this signification. The Greek name _Phoenicians_, is supposed by some to be derived from _phoinizai_, "to kill," whence _Phoinikes_ (Phoenicians), "bloody men." The Phoenicians, being very jealous of their maritime trade, killed and in every way molested the navigators from other lands who dared to follow their vessels or spy out their extensive maritime establishments, factories, or connections. For this reason the Greeks long considered the Tyrrenian seas as highly dangerous for navigators, and as filled with rocks, monsters, and anthropophagi. Other investigators, again, derive the Greek word Phoenicians from their _ruddy_ complexion, or from their having first navigated the Red Sea. The primitive seats of the Phoenicians lay north and south of Syria. From thence they are supposed to have emigrated to Palestine through the northern part of Syria, while another column from the south advanced from the delta on the Persian Gulf, anciently called _Assyrium Stagnum_, or from the islands of Tyros (Tylos) and Arados, situated in the above-named waters. Some writers suppose that an earthquake obliged them to emigrate from these shores of the Erythrean or Red Sea (Persian Gulf) of antiquity, and that their Greek name owes its origin to this circumstance. These wanderings through regions already thickly inhabited by various tribes and nations, may have contributed to develop in these Shemites that powerful mercantile propensity to which they chiefly owe their historical immortality; then and there, too, they most probably began the traffic in slaves, to which, if they were not its originators, they certainly gave a new and powerful impulse. Thus, while the Phoenicians figure in history as the earliest navigators and merchants, they must also be written down in the light of having inaugurated, or at least, greatly extended the accursed slave-trade.