Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/791

Rh A M O A M O 747 iaries from tlie south are the Songari, which the Chinese consider to be the true head river of the Amoor, and the Ussuri; from the north it receives the Zeya, the Bureia, the Gyrin, and the Omogun. The climate of the valley of the Amoor varies very much in different parts : in the upper portion of its course there are long and cold winters and short summers; as the river descends into more southern latitudes the rigour of the climate relaxes, and the heat becomes almost tropical ; the vegetation is rich and luxu riant, and large forests of oaks, limes, and elms replace barren larches and firs ; while on the lower Amoor the cold again to a certain extent prevails, and at the mouth the river is ice-boimd for more than half the year, a circum stance which greatly impairs its otherwise admirable facilities for navigation. The river is abundantly stocked with fish, and the mountains near it are believed to contain iron and gold. The Amoor became known to the Russians in 1639, and they resolved to annex it to their empire along with the territory through which it flows. In 1651 a party of Cossacks, under a bold leader named Khabaroff, built a fort at Albazin, about 100 miles below Ust Strelkot. Many sanguinary conflicts between the Chinese and the Russians followed. Albazin more than once changed owners ; but at last, in 1689, a treaty was concluded, by which the river Gorbiza or Kerbeche became the easterly limit of the Russian empire on the Amoor, the boundaiy stretching from the source of the Gorbiza, along the Yablonnoi moun tains, to the Sea of Okhotsk. This state of matters con tinued till 1847, when the Russians again began to make preparations for the conquest of the Amoor valley. In 1850 and the three succeeding years, expeditions were sent up the river, and the towns of Nikolaevsk, Marinsk, and Blagovchenk were founded; in 1854 a powerful flotilla sailed down from Ust Strelkoi to the mouth of the river. A large and very important tract was added to the Russian empire by the cession in 1858 of the whole left bank of the Amoor and the right bank below the Ussuri, and the further cession in 1860 of all the territory between the Ussuri and the Eastern Sea. AMORITES, a powerful people, widely spread through the Promised Land before the settlement of the Israelites, belonging to the Canaanitic stock, according to Gen. x. 1 6, though some think they belong rather to the pre-Canaanitic inhabitants of the Jordan basin (see Knobel, Volkertafel, 201, sq., who refers them to the Shemitic race of Lud). In all probability there were incorporated among them the remnants of the older tribe of the Rephaim. Their name, &quot; the high ones,&quot; has by Ewald (Gesch. Israels, i. 315), after Simonis (Onomasticon, s.v.) been interpreted highlanders, or inhabitants of the heights, as Canaanites is supposed to mean lowlanders, or inhabitants of the plains (cf. Num. xiii. 29; Deut. i. 44; Josh. v. 1, x. 6). Others call this in question, and find an explanation rather in the tallness of stature by which they seem to have been distinguished (Num. xiii. 32, 33; Amos ii. 9, cf. Kurtz, Gesch. d. Alt. Bundes, i. 45 ; Pusey, Minor Prophets, 174, n.) That this people had a certain preponderance among the Canaan itic tribes is shown by their name often standing in Scripture for Canaanites in general (Gen. xv. 16 ; Josh. xxiv. 18 ; Jud. vi. 10). Their principal seat on the west of the Jordan was the mountains of Judah and their southern slopes, to the whole of which moun tainous region, indeed, the name the Mount of the Amorites is applied (Gen. xiv. 7, 13 ; Num. xiii. 29 ; Deut. i. 7, 20, 44; Josh. xi. 3 ; Jud. i. 36). We hear of them also at Gibeon, north-west of Jerusalem (2 Sam. xxi. 2), at Aijalon, west of Gibeon, and in the northern part of the Philistine plain (Jud. i. 34, 35), and in the land of Ephraim (Gen. xlviii. 22). On the east of Jordan, after having driven back the Ammonites and Moabites, they occupied the whole of Gilead and Bashan, from the Arnon, the northern limit of Moab, as far as Mount Hermon, forming in this region at the epoch of Moses two powerful kingdoms, that of Sihon, whose capital was Heshbon, the more southerly ; and that of Og, whose capital was Ashtaroth, the more northerly (Num. xxi. 21-35 ; Deut. iii. 8, 10 ; iv. 48). It was with this east-Jordanic section of the Amorites that the Israelites first came into conflict. After these had been subdued, and after the Israelites had crossed the Jordan and had begun to capture the Canaanitish towns, five of the most powerful of the Amorite kings of the western section formed a con federacy to oppose the advancing host (Josh. x. 5, sq.) When this combination had been overthrown, a final attempt at resistance was made by the more northerly portion of the Canaanites, under the auspices of Jabin, king of Hazor ; and in the united forces, which were overthrown at the waters of Merom, Amorites were included (Josh. xi. 3). Those of this and the other tribes of the Canaanites who survived the conquests of Joshua, either gradually became mingled with the Philistines and others of the neighbour ing nations, or they continued to live among the Israelites in the condition of tributaries and slaves (Josh. xi. 22 ; Jud. i. 34, 35 ; 1 Kings ix. 21 ; 2 Chron. viii. 8). In old Egyptian literature mention is frequently made, from the time of Sethos I., of an Asiatic people called the Amar or Amaor, whom Egyptologers agree in identifying with the Amorites (Bunsen, Egypt s Place, vol. iii. 212). There is as yet less agreement in regard to the position of their country. Brugsch is of opinion that the people in question are located in the north of Syria, on the banks of the Orontes (see his Gcog. Inschriftcn, Bd. ii. 21 ; Hist. d Egypte, 132, 187). The later researches of Chabas, however, have rendered the interpretation on which this view depends very doubtful, and shown that in all probability their territory lies, in entire harmony with the representations of Scripture regarding the Amorites, on the west of the Dead Sea and south of the land of Judah (Chabas, Etudes sur tAntiquite, 267, f. ; Recherches, 44, 107.) Among the towns of the Amaor are mentioned Dapiir and Kodesh, evidently to be identified with the scriptural Debir and Kadesh. The language, &c., of the Amorites will be more conveniently considered under CANAANITES. AMORPHISM (from a privative, and p-oprfrrj, form), a term used in chemistry and mineralogy to denote the absence of regular structure in a body. Glass, resin, coal, albuminous substances, &c., are amorphous, exhibiting uniformity of properties in every direction : they have no planes of cleavage, as crystals have; they conduct heat equally in all directions ; and they do not show double refraction unless in a constrained state. Amorphism is not peculiar to one kind of substances, for the same molecules may exist either in the amorphous or the crystalline state. Thus charcoal or lamp-black is the amorphous form of the diamond ; sulphur and phosphorus, when slowly cooled, assume a crystalline arrangement, but when rapidly cooled are perfectly homogeneous the suddenness of transition from the liquid or fused state giving no time for definite arrangement of particles. AMOS (not the same as Amoz, the father of Isaiah) was an inhabitant of the district of Tekoa, a fortified town (2d Chron. xi. 6) among the hills of the south of Judah, where a breed of stunted sheep and goats, prized, how ever, for their wool and hair, found a scanty pasturage (Amos i. 1). Possibly he was a common day labourer; certainly he was far from wealthy, as the Jewish com mentators would have him ; for though he is called a &quot;noked&quot; (loc. cit.), like one of the kings of Moab (2 Kings iii. 4), he tells us himself that he was glad to com bine this employment with that of a dresser of sycamore fruit (vii. 14). He may thus be contrasted, as the peasant prophet, with Isaiah, the prophet of the capital and the court. It does not, however, follow that Amos was devoid of such cultivation as could then be had. Distinctions of rank were not, among the primitive Semitic races, co incident with those of culture ; it is enough to refer to the pre-Mohammedan Arabs, whose poetry has been so accu rately reproduced by Riickert. And in the case of Amos there is evidence in his own works that he was well acquainted with the literature of his day. It is true that he boldly admits the irregularity, from an official point of view, of his prophetic ministrations &quot; No prophet I, and no prophet s disciple I&quot; (vii. 14); but his discourses are not only full of references (sometimes dubious) to the book of Joel and the Pentateuch, but framed, however