The chief difference is caused by either the extraordinary abundance of camels in the account of Job's wealth, or the extraordinary deficiency of these animals in the stock of Jacob. We have counted the foals in the estimate of the latter, and yet the number is small in proportion to that of other animals. Upon the whole, we incline to think that Jacob, coming from Mesopotamia, where to this day camels are few in comparison with those possessed in and on the borders of Arabia, had not the usual proportion of these animals, and that, with respect to them, the estimate formed on the basis of his present to his brother, does not adequately represent the wealth of the patriarchs in Canaan. There is every probability that the number possessed by them was as large in proportion to their other cattle as in the case of Job.

It cannot fail to strike the attention of the most cursory reader, that horses, which form so important a part of the modern Bedouin's possessions, are altogether absent in the statements of the same kinds of wealth belonging to Abraham, Jacob, and Job. It is scarcely possible that the animal should have been unknown to them. In fact, although Job did not possess horses, his book contains the most magnificent description of a war-horse that has ever been given; Job xxxix. 19–25. Again, although there is no mention of horses among the animals which Abraham received from the king of Egypt, this cannot well have been owing to the want of them in that country; for they are found in the most ancient sculptures, and are in this very book mentioned as present in the funeral procession of Jacob from Egypt to the land of Canaan. The truth probably is, that horses were in these early ages used entirely for warlike purposes, and that the powerful patriarchs were averse to the responsibility attached to the use or possession of such animals, especially in a country like Canaan, to which the employment of horses, even for war, does not seem to have at this time extended. This view of the exclusively warlike character of the horse in early times, throws some light upon the injunction in the law against the use of horses; Deut. xvii. 16.

I find from conversation with thoughtful men in this country upon the scriptural accounts of patriarchal life, that it is not unusual to suppose that the numbers of the flocks and herds as given by the sacred writers are either exaggerated, or else that they have been in some way tampered with. That Job really possessed 7000 sheep and 3000 camels, or that 50,000 camels and 250,000 sheep could have been taken by the Israelites from the Ishmaelitish tribes (1 Chron. v. 21), is thought incredible. My personal knowledge of the wealth of many of the great desert tribes would have convinced me, had I required any such proof, that the Bible narratives are in this respect, as in all others, literally true. In the spring of 1857 I was for two days among the Wulid Ali Bedawîn. They had more than three hundred tents; and I estimated the number of their camels at from thirty to forty thousand. When travelling to Palmyra in 1851, I passed through several subdivisions of the Sebâ tribe. Their flocks and herds were spread over the plains far as the eye could see. I was told that it was no uncommon thing for the camels to cover the pasture grounds to a distance of a day's journey from the tents. On one occasion I was partly witness to a successful Arab raid upon the flocks of Hums and Hamath, in the valley of the Orontes, in which they were said to have captured no less than thirty thousand sheep and goats.

These facts illustrate some of those stirring incidents of patriarchal life recorded in Scripture. They show, too, how natural was the statement of the sacred writer in regard to Abraham and Lot: 'The land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together;' Gen. xiii. 6.

Seventh Week-Third Day.

THE TENT.-GENESIS XIII. 3.

It is an interesting fact, which we have already had occasion to notice,1 that the house was earlier than the tent, and the settled than the migratory condition of life. No sooner, however, did man betake himself to that mode of life which obliged him to move often from place to place in search of pasturage, than he

1 Fourth Week-Third Day.

found it necessary to devise some kind of portable habitation. It would be interesting to trace, were it possible, the stages by which tents reached the form and texture which they have now for many ages retained in South-western Asia. The limitation

to this region is necessary; for the quality of these portable habitations depends very much upon the climate, and other local circumstances of the country in which they are found. It is by no means probable, that the tents invented by Jabal before the Deluge were in all respects the same as those which formed the encampment of the patriarchs in the land of Canaan -even apart from the question, whether the climate of the region in which Jabal wandered was not materially different from that in which Abraham sojourned.

Thus, in well-wooded countries, temporary habitations are often, in various parts of the world, formed of the interwoven branches of trees, constructed so rapidly, and with so little cost of labour, as to be abandoned without regret when the station is quitted; and if a return is made thereto, new dwellings are formed in the same manner, while the dry materials of the previous encampment, left formerly on the spot, then become useful as fuel. It is by no means clear that the patriarchs did not resort to this plan, perhaps as an agreeable change, when the nature of the country allowed. What else was the 'house' that Jacob dwelt in for a time on his return from Mesopotamia?1 It is even likely that the Israelites, during their forty years' wandering, did not live wholly in tents. In the annual commemoration of their pilgrimage in the feast of tabernacles, they lived, not in tents, but in booths made of green boughs. This would have been very inappropriate, had not such habitations been in partial use by the Israelites during the time of their sojourning; for a tent would have been in many respects better suited for commemorative purposes, as a family that once possessed it could retain it many years for that service. A tent is, however, a better habitation than a booth; and since, in every large encampment, as in a large village or town, there must have been some indigent persons, it is likely that these 1 Gen. xxxiii. 17.

2

2 Lev. xxiii. 42; Neh. viii. 14-17.

possessed no tents, but constructed for themselves, at each removal, temporary habitations of such materials as could be found on the spot, and these would frequently be booths of green branches.

In some parts of the East, as among the Hindus, the tents or huts are of bamboo or osier reeds, and easily portable. We have ourselves seen the encampments of Arabian and Kurdish tribes wholly formed of reeds; but this is chiefly on the banks of rivers, where such materials are easily obtained.

Portable habitations may even be rendered suitable to the exigencies of severe climates. Thus, the Samoede constructs a

somewhat warm habitation with the bark of trees, sewed together and covered over with skins. This is, however, a later invention, when men got into climates where they found that the tent of skin alone was an insufficient protection from the severity of the cold.

Perhaps the most perfect and convenient habitation of this class, at least of all the different kinds with which we have ourselves had occasion to become acquainted, is that of the Kalmuk Tartar. It owes its completeness, probably, to its being required to afford shelter not only from the heat in summer, but from somewhat severe cold in winter. These tents consist of a number of parts, which are easily put together and taken to pieces. They are round, with a funnel-shaped

roof, and blunt at the top. The framework is composed of willow laths about an inch thick, perforated where they cross, and fastened with leathern thongs. Six or eight pieces of lattice-work, when fastened together with woollen bands, compose a circular wall not quite the height of a man. The doorway is inserted separately in its own frame, and consists of two small folding valves. From this lower framework proceed a number of poles on every side, meeting in a common centre above, where they are intercepted by a sort of hoop having holes in which their extremities are inserted. Over these poles a few woollen girths are passed crosswise, and attached to the

framework below. The whole of the skeleton is then covered over with coarse, porous, unfulled felts, of considerable size, secured by woollen girths and bands.

Seeing that this kind of habitation originated in the pastoral life, we incline to think that the original tents were covered with skins the skins of sheep or goats, at first probably with the wool or hair on, but eventually the skin alone, separated from the hair, and, in time, prepared with various leys and earths, so as to resist the influences of heat and wet. When men became hunters for the pastoral preceded the hunting life-they for the most part retained this form of tent, with this difference, that it was covered with the skins of the beasts of their pursuit, instead of those they tended. Hence the ent