of hundreds and of tens, which the priests reviewed in the second year, and made more complete by adding the age and lineage of each one. Then from the tables completed by this new survey a larger book was formed, in which each one was numbered as living, although he might have died during the preceding year. The number was 603,550, excluding the infants, the youth who had not reached their twentieth year, all the women, the servants, and the whole tribe of Levi. The number of the Levites was 22,300, which added to the former number will make the sum of 625,850; and if to this we add the infants and the females, and the servants, which would probably increase it fourfold, the whole amount will be 2,503,400. Therefore if the new habitation of the Israelites had been unfruitful, it could by no means have supported so large a multitude. Beside, Moses placed the foundation of his republick in agriculture which he could not by any means have done, had not the land been fertile. Each one of the Israelites received a portion of land as his private property, which was left to his posterity, and which it was wrong to sell; for all the support of the Israelites, as long as they dwelt in the land, was derived from pasturage and agriculture. God himself describes this region as "A good land and a large, a land flowing with milk and honey." Mosest also gives the same description when the camp was in the neighbourhood of Jericho; the Lord, says he, will bring you into a good land, a land of rivers and of fountains, in whose plains and mountains, streams flow forth; a land of corn, barley, and vineyards, in which the fig-tree and promegranate and olive-tree grow, a land of olives and honey. It is preferred to Egypt: "For the land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from which ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed and wateredst it with thy foot as a garden of herbs; but the land whither * Exod. iii. 8. + Deut. xi. 10. + Deut. xi. 10. ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rain of heaven." Finally, Moses celebrates the fertility of Palestine in a song to be sung by the Israelites in this land.* "The Lord," says he, "made him to ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink of the pure blood of the grape." § II. The advantages of Palestine when compared with Egypt. The testimony of Mosest has appeared incredible to many; whence, they say, they have been compelled to regard his representations as false, when he extols the land of Palestine in the highest praises, and describes it as abounding with superior privileges, because it is watered with rain from heaven and running streams, whilst Egypt is watered only by the overflowings of the Nile. But to this we may add that Palestine possesses the most delightful climate, having neither too great nor too small a quantity of rain. ABULFEDA divides the different countries into the salubres, that is, those which are irrigated by rain, and the insalubres, that is, those which are inundated by rivers. And no one will venture a denial, that in this respect Palestine enjoys advantages far surpassing those of Egypt. BARTHOLINUS on the properties of water says, that rain water is in itself transparent, clear, subtile, light, Num. xiii. * Deut. xxxii. 13. Conf. 27, xiv. 7, 8. Jos. xxiii. 14, Ezech. xx. 6. Joel. ii. 3. p. 356. Exod. xiii. 5, xxiii. 1. Lev. xx. 24. + Deut. xi. 10. Lib xiii. p. 553 and savoury; that its clearness indicates that there is no foreign admixture with it, and its lightness and sapidity show that it is a subtile substance. He, adds that of all kinds of water it is most productive of fertility, and especially when it falls with thunder, for the thunder by its motion scatters the vapour and makes the water thin and pure. In Palestine moreover the atmosphere is serene and salubrious, but in Egypt many diseases unavoidably arise from the quantity of mud and dirt which the Nile produces. For Egypt, especially the upper part, is watered by few or no showers. The lower part has rain, but only in the months of November, December, and January.† Hence, when in the time of Psamenitus, king of Egypt, a rain descended at Thebes, it was considered as a prodigy; for whilst a solitary rain at far distant intervals descends on those parts adjacent to the sea, and those parts which are above Memphis have no rain, at that time, the atmosphere presented a new appearance and a tempestuous storm rushed upon them. This novel and astonishing event‡ overwhelmed them with terror. Since then, Egypt is almost entirely deprived of showers, its fertility depends solely on the inundations of the Nile, whence the Egyptians§ feign the Nile to be a deity, and they esteem it the greatest of the deities, declaring it to be a rival of the heavens, because without clouds or rain, it waters the land and moistens the earth yearly instead of showers. These things the common people say. But those skilled in their mysteries affirm that the land is Isis, and the Nile Osiris. Conf. Ray's Collection of Travels, Tom. ii. p. 92. Greaves Beschreibung der Pyramiden, p. 74, &c. ↑ Vansleben's Relation d'Egypte p. 37, 354. Thevenot's voyage au Levante lib ii. p. 789. Vossii Obsen. ad Melam desitu orbis. lib i. c. 9. Dapper's Beschr. von Afrika, p. 127. + Conf. Herodoti hist. lib iii. cap. 10. Philo Judæus in vita Mosis, lib i. page 481. Edit. Genev. § Conf. Thesaurus numismatum antiquorum cum commentariis I. Oiseli, Tab, xxxiv. n. 9. et Trestani Numism. T. i. p. 307. The Egyptians also worshiped* the Nile under the name of Serapis. § III. Of the origin of the Nile. Respecting the origin of the Nile which many derive from the mountains of the moon, the opinions of authors are various. Many kings and emperors have investigated it in vain, so that it has become a proverb, that to seek for the head of the Nile is to seek for a thing that is arduous and beyond the powers of man.† Alexander, indeed, when he saw crocodiles in the Hydaspes and Egyptian beans in Acesines, thought that he had discovered the source of the Nile, and prepared a fleet for Egypt, intending to sail down this river into the Nile, but he soon discovered that his hopes were not to be realised, for large rivers intervened, and the Ocean also into which all the rivers of India flow; and besides these Ariana and the Arabian and Persian gulfs; and Arabia and Troglodytica.‡ Hieronymus Lobo, according to TELLEZ, in his history of Aethiopia, says that the Nile rises in the kingdom of Gojam, a country under the Aethiopians or Abyssinians, in latitude twelve degrees from the Equator. SUDAS says, the etesias blow during the greater part of the summer; because the sun ascending higher and approaching nearer to the north, dissolves the moisture which exists in that part, which, mingling with the air and wind, forms the etesiæ: and this wind carried from the north into the south, when it meets the higher mountains of Aethiopia, is condensed and forms rain by which the Nile, although coming from * Vid. Sekmanni diss. hist. de Serapide Egyptorum Deo maximo, Lipsiae 1666. Bosseckii diss. de fluminum cultu. Lipsiae 1740. Seldenus de Diis Syris. Synt. i. c. 4. Kercheri Oedipus Egypt. T. i. Synt. S. c. 7, T. iii. Synt. 15. c. 1. Vossii Theologia Gentilium lib. ii. c. 74, 75. † Strabo, lib. xv. p. 696. 4 Kercheri Oedipus Egypt. T. i. Synt. 1. c. 7. North East Winds which blow for forty days during the dog days. a dry and tropical climate, is made to overflow. What Sudas here says of the increase of the Nile, Pliny declares, is believed by others also, where he gives the different opinions respecting the source of the Nile. He says* that authors have advanced various causes of the increase of the Nile, the most probable of which are, the condensation of the etesiae, blowing at that time from contrary directions, the sea being driven beyond its shores; or the summer showers of Aethiopia, the etesiae carrying the clouds thither from the rest of the world. Ammonius testifies the same thing. The most famous opinion is that the Prodromit blowing, and continual blasts of the Etsiae meeting them for forty-five days, the velocity of the flowing of the river is retarded, so that its waves swell and overflow. In this manner the river continues to flow, still opposed by the winds, until it inundates the whole country. The opinions which Pliny and Sudas have expressed in their writings, they appear to have taken from Callisthenes and Democritus, who express the same sentiments. But the opinion that seems most probable to me is that the Nile arises not from fountains, but has its source in Aethiopia from the rains which fall there, and which, when the sun enters the sign of the cancer, are very great and abundant, and continue such for the space of forty days. In the month of June, on the seventeenth day the river begins to increase and inundates the whole of Egypt. This increase ends in the month of August and some times not until the middle of September; at which time it gradually diminishes, after the space of three months have intervened. The more abundant its increase has been, the slower is its fall, and the later the harvest. In this manner it supplies the wants of the husbandman§. * Plinii hist. nat. lib. v. cap. 9. + lib. xxii. Winds which blow for eight days before the rising of the dog star. § Homer represents the Nile as descending from heaven. A'' sis Αιγύπτοιο διίπετεος ποταμοιο Odyss. Δ. V. 581, |