Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/511

Rh occasioned great devastation. Pausanius says, that this flood happened in Ethiopia in the reign of Cecrops; and, about the 1490 before Christ, the Israelites entered the land of promise, under Caleb and Joshua. We are not to wonder at the great impression that invasion made upon the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. We see by the history of the harlot, that the different nations had been long informed by prophecies, current and credited among themselves, that they were to be extirpated before the face of the Israelites who for some time had been hovering about their frontiers. But now when Joshua had passed the Jordan, after having miraculously dried up the river * before his army had invaded Canaan, and had taken and destroyed Jericho, a panic seized the whole people of Syria and Palestine.

petty states, many in number, and who had all different languages, seeing a conqueror with an immense army already in possession of part of their country, and who did not conduct himself according to the laws of other conquerors, but put the vanquished under saws and harrows of iron, and destroyed the men, women, and children; and sometimes even the cattle, by the sword, no longer could think of waiting the arrival of such an enemy, but sought for safety by speedy flight or emigration. The Shepherds in Abyssinia and Atbara were the most natural refuge these fugitives could seek; commerce must have long made them acquainted with each others manners, and they

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 * Joshua, iii. 16.