+The Land and People.+--For practical purposes a distinction between Palestine and Syria is unnecessary, apart from the political results of their contiguity to Egypt and Asia Minor respectively. Egypt at the height of its power was a vast empire of unprecedented wealth and splendour, and the imported works of art or the descriptions of the spoils of war speak eloquently of the stage which material culture had reached throughout Western Asia. Even the small townships of Palestine and Syria--the average city was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, {9} sometimes with an outer wall--could furnish rich booty of suits of armour, elegant furniture, and articles of gold and silver. The pottery shows some little taste, music was enjoyed, and a great tunnel hewn out of the rock at Gezer is proof of enterprise and skill. The agricultural wealth of the land was famous. Thutmose III. found grain 'more plentiful than the sand of the shore'; and an earlier and more peaceful visitor to N. Syria, Sinuhe (about 2000 B.C.), speaks of the wine more plentiful than water, copious honey, abundance of oil, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and numberless cattle. Sinuhe was welcomed by a sheikh who gave him his eldest daughter and allowed him to choose a landed possession. Life was simpler and less civilised than in Egypt, but not without excitement. He led the tribesmen to war, raiding pastures and wells, capturing the cattle, ravaging the hostile districts. Indeed, 'lions and Asiatics' were the familiar terror of Egyptian travellers, and the turbulence of the petty chieftains, whose intrigues and rivalries swell the Amarna letters, made any combined action among themselves exceptional and transitory. We gather from these letters that foreign envoys were provided with passports or credentials addressed to the 'Kings of Canaan,' to ensure their speedy and safe passage {10} as they traversed the areas of the different local authorities. Such royal commissioners are already met with in the time of Sinuhe.