One of the reasons why the Children of Israel under Joshua were able to get a hold on the land of Canaan is that the Philistines had already made their appearance there. The country of these Philistines was a narrow stretch along the south-eastern edge of the Mediterranean, running down to the border of Egypt. It seems surprising that the Israelites should owe any {96} good thing to the Philistines, because we always find the two peoples at bitter war with each other; but it appears that just before the time of the Israelites' coming up from the southern deserts the Philistines had been making matters very difficult for the Egyptians in what the Egyptians called their province of Palestine, and that this province and the province of Syria also, a little to the north, were not really under any effective Egyptian rule at all at the moment. The tribes were not united together, and were weak in their disunion. These Philistines were a warlike people. It is not known precisely of what race they were. Some have thought that they were settlers from Crete, which held, as we saw, rule over the sea. Other scholars suppose them to have been, like most of the peoples of that region, a branch of the great Semitic tree which we have seen spreading so widely. But wherever they came from, there they were established along this sea-coast, a people ready to fight by land or sea, ready to go trading, too, no doubt, in their ships, if they could make profit by it--a bold, enterprising people. And there was another people, settled along another strip, farther north, of the same coast--the Phœnicians. Almost exactly the same account is to be given of them. They, too, were great sailors and navigators, great traders, great pirates. We do not hear so much about them just at this point of the great story which we have now reached: the Philistines play a bigger part in it for the moment. But the Phœnicians, you will see, are far more important really, for in a few hundred years the Philistines are little more heard of. The excellence of the Phœnicians as navigators made a big difference to the story. {97} When the Israelites succeeded in pushing their army thus into Palestine, westward of the Jordan river, their victory was by no means complete. It was a long while before they got the better of those Philistines near the coast, and at one time it looked very much as if the Philistines would conquer them. We may suppose that they did not come up out of the desert with much of the equipment necessary for the attack of walled cities, such as I have just described that necessary equipment to be. [Sidenote: Israel and Judah]