The fighting population of Canaan, in short, were the foreigners, and these it was who gradually made themselves its practical masters. The leaders of the mercenaries became the rulers of the Canaanite states, which thus passed into the hands of a dominant military caste. When the Israelites entered the country it was with this military upper class that they had principally to deal; where the Canaanite had not its protection he trusted for his defence to his iron chariots and the strong and lofty walls of his towns. It is instructive to read the long list of unconquered cities and districts given by the Hebrew historian in the first chapter of the Book of Judges; among them are the Jebusites of Jerusalem, while we are told that “the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them to come down to the valley.” Canaan, it will probably be thought, was a somewhat insecure country in which to live in the days of the Egyptian Empire. There seem to have been constant turmoil and confusion, governor attacking governor and bribing bands of foreign mercenaries to help him. But the turmoil and confusion were mainly on the surface. When a town is taken from one governor by another we do not hear of its population or their possessions suffering materially; they soon appear upon the scene again as prosperous as before. It is merely the governor and his immediate surroundings who suffer; the capture of the town was probably an affair amicably arranged between the condottieri who were attacking it and the condottieri who were its defenders. The Egyptian commissioners go up and down the country, hearing complaints and settling disputes, and no one ventures even to protest against their decisions, while a few Egyptian troops are stationed in places where the Government was not quite sure of the fidelity of its subjects. Caravans of merchants passed through Canaan going from Egypt to the north, and the traders of Babylonia and Asia Minor travelled along its high-roads under the escort of Hittite and other chieftains who were subsidized for the purpose by the Egyptian court. Even in the days when the Egyptian Government was breaking up, the constant fighting among the foreign mercenaries and their employers seems to have affected the mass of the population little, if at all.