This is expressed in legend by making Esau the elder brother of Jacob, but only the elder of twins, with whom the younger strives even in the womb and tries to prevent him from being the first to issue forth. Ultimately, Esau is cheated of his birthright by Jacob or sells it to him for a mess of pottage. Edom, on the other hand, always maintained his dominions, although for a while under the suzerainty of Israel or Judah, in the wild and barren mountain tract of Seir, which rises to the south of the mountains of Judah. But this is precisely where the aboriginal inhabitants whom the Edomites had found in possession held their ground longest, protected by the unfertility of their country, which made agriculture impossible and compelled its inhabitants to adopt the rude life of shepherds and hunters. These aboriginal inhabitants were called Horites, _i.e._ cave-dwellers. There may have been Horite elements even in the Edomite population of southern Judah, for we still find cave-dwellings at Beit-Jibrin (Bethogabris) and meet with Horite clan-names amongst those of Judah. It may also be conjectured that a very primitive state of civilisation had survived among them, for a great many of these little clans are called by the names of animals. But neither from this circumstance nor from the form of their names can we deduce any conclusion as to the branch of the Semitic race to which these Horites belonged. For the names of animals are found as tribal names among all Semites, and the form of these names--even supposing it to have been handed down accurately--would allow of their being considered either Hebrew or Arabic. In the course of Jewish history the vicissitudes of the fortune of the Edomite nation occupy us again and again. Just such a Hebrew tribe, or coalition of Hebrew tribes, as they were, amalgamating with the Semitic population already in possession to form the nations of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, was the stock from which, by amalgamation with Canaanite and other elements, the people of Israel sprang. Israel, Men of Israel, Children of Israel, was in historic times the title of honour which it bestowed upon itself and its members. But even after its migration and settlement in the land west of Jordan, the non-Israelite inhabitants of the country called it by the collective name of the Hebrews, and thus it comes about that to this day it bears that name in the speech of all nations, and its language is spoken of as Hebrew.