statements which respect nations and armies; for pride and fear have, in
their turn, contributed not a little to exaggerate, in rival countries,
the amount of the persons capable of taking a share in the field of
battle. Proceeding on the usual grounds of calculation, we must infer,
from the number of warriors whom Moses conducted through the desert, that
the Hebrew people, when they crossed the Jordan, did not fall short of two
millions; while, from facts recorded in the book of Samuel, we may
conclude with greater confidence that the enrolment made under the
direction of Joab must have returned a gross population of five millions
and a half.

The present aspect of Palestine, under an administration where every thing
decays and nothing is renewed, can afford no just criterion of the
accuracy of such statements. Hasty observers have indeed pronounced that a
hilly country destitute of great rivers, could not, even under the most
skilful management, supply food for so many mouths. But this precipitate
conclusion has been vigorously combated by the most competent judges, who
have taken pains to estimate the produce of a soil under the fertilizing
influence of a sun which may be regarded as almost tropical, and of a
well-regulated irrigation which the Syrians knew how to practise with the
greatest success. Canaan, it must be admitted, could not be compared to
Egypt in respect to corn. There is no Nile to scatter the riches of an
inexhaustible fecundity over its valleys and plains. Still it was not
without reason that Moses described it as "a good land, a land of brooks
of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a
land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a
land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without
scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are
iron, and out of whose hills thou mayst dig brass."[5]