Because most of the nations whose descent is traced from Shem, in Genesis x., speak languages alike in structure and entirely different from other languages, we have accustomed ourselves, ever since the days of Eichhorn, to call these nations and languages Semitic. And because peoples who speak analogous languages are always, to a certain extent, connected by similarity of descent, and consequently, by physical and mental resemblances, we likewise speak of a Semitic race. Under this heading we class all the nations that speak languages of the Hebrew type, and these are the Aramæans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phœnicians, Arabs, and a large proportion of the Abyssinians. Hence the phrase Semitic peoples or languages is, like so many that are used in science, merely a conventional term. As far back as history goes, the inhabitants of Palestine have always been people of Semitic speech, _i.e._ of a language of the Hebrew type. In the very earliest times to which historical research can give us any clew, the period before the immigration of the Israelites into the land west of Jordan, the population of Palestine varied, exactly as it does now, according to the character of the various parts of the country. Moreover, then as now, the Jordan and the Jordan Valley constituted the main barrier between these Semitic peoples. To the west of Jordan dwells an agricultural population, divided up into numerous small tribes, which we are in the habit of calling Canaanite. The collective term Canaanite had of course been extended from a single district or tribe named Canaan to the whole body of cognate peoples. The inhabitants of the Phœnician maritime cities are of the same race, and so are those of the kingdom of the Hittites, which lies to the north of Palestine. On the farther side of Jordan, however, dwell Semitic tribes, in many cases still nomadic, speaking the same language as the rest, but inferior to them in civilisation, who are each and all styled “Ibrim” (Hebrews), _i.e._ “those beyond” or those that dwell beyond Jordan. But along the southern, no less than on the eastern, frontier of the land west of Jordan, wandered nomadic tribes (intermingled to a great extent with Canaanite and Hebrew tribes), who are classed, according to common opinion, under the general heading of Arab, a view to which the few remains in the shape of proper names which have come down to us, offers no contradiction. This order of things was disturbed when one of the aforesaid Hebrew tribes began to migrate by degrees into the country west of Jordan, to settle there, and ultimately to take possession of it more and more completely. During the process it mingled freely with the original Canaanite population, whose civilisation it gradually assimilated, while at the same time some other Hebrew and Arabian tribes were merged in it.