some discoveries in 1899–1900. A complete examination of the site, however, was impossible. 4. Tell-el-Mutasellim, near Lejjun (Megiddo-Legio). Schumacher began working here in 1903 for the German Palestine Society. 5. Taannek, on the south of the plain of Esdraelon. Here Prof. Ernst Sellin of Vienna was able to do much in a short time (1902–1904). It may be mentioned here that on the first of these sites a cuneiform tablet belonging to the Amarna series was discovered; at Gezer, a deed of sale; at Tell-el-Hasy the remains of a Babylonian stele, three seals, and three cylinders with Babylonian mythological representations; at Tell-el-Mutasellim, a seal bearing a Babylonian legend, and at Taannek, twelve tablets and fragments of tablets were found near the fragments of the terracotta box in which they were stored. It is a remarkable fact that the kings or chiefs of the neighbourhood should have used Babylonian cuneiform in their own official correspondence. But much beside tablets has been found on these sites; primitive sanctuaries, for instance. The splendid alignment of monoliths at Gezer is described in detail in P.E.F. Quart. Statement, January 1903, p. 23, and July 1903, p. 219. There is reason, as Macalister thinks, to believe that it is the result of a gradual development, beginning with two small pillars, and gradually enlarging by later additions. There is a smaller one at Tell-eṣ-Ṣafy. The Semitic cult of sacred standing stones is thus proved to be of great antiquity; Sellin’s discoveries at Taannek and those of Bliss at Tell-eṣ-Ṣafy fully confirm this. Rock-hewn altars have also been found, illustrating the prohibition in Ex. xx. 25, 26, and numerous jars with the skeletons of infants. We cannot doubt that the sacrificing of children was practised on a large scale among the Canaanites. Their chief deity was Ashtart (Astarte), the goddess of fertility. Numerous images of her have been found, but none of the god Baal. The types of the divine form vary in the different places. The other images which have been found represent Egyptian deities. We must not, however, infer that there was a large Egyptian element in the Canaanitish Pantheon. What the images do prove is the large amount of intercourse between Egypt and Canaan, and the presence of Egyptians in the subject country.
See the Tell-el-Amarna Letters, ed. by Winckler, with translation (1896); the reports of Macalister in the Pal. Expl. Fund Statements from 1903 onwards; Sellin’s report of excavations at Tell Ta’annek; also H. W. Hogg, “Recent Assyriology,” &c., in Inaugural Lectures ed. by Prof. A. S. Peake (Manchester University, 1905). On Biblical questions, see Dillmann’s commentaries and the Bible dictionaries. See further articles Palestine; Jews. (T. K. C.)
CANACHUS, a sculptor of Sicyon in Achaea, of the latter part of the 6th century B.C. He was especially noted as the author of two great statues of Apollo, one in bronze made for the temple at Miletus, and one in cedar wood made for Thebes. The coins of Miletus furnish us with copies of the former and show the god to have held a stag in, one hand and a bow in the other. The rigidity of these works naturally impressed later critics.
CANADA. The Dominion of Canada comprises the northern half of the continent of North America and its adjacent islands, excepting Alaska, which belongs to the United States, and Newfoundland, still a separate colony of the British empire. Its boundary on the south is the parallel of latitude 49°, between the Pacific Ocean and Lake-of-the-Woods, then a chain of small lakes and rivers eastward to the mouth of Pigeon river on the north-west side of Lake Superior, and the Great Lakes with their connecting rivers to Cornwall, on the St Lawrence. From this eastward to the state of Maine the boundary is an artificial line nearly corresponding to lat. 45°; then an irregular line partly determined by watersheds and rivers divides Canada from Maine, coming out on the Bay of Fundy. The western boundary is the Pacific on the south, an irregular line a few miles inland from the coast along the “pan handle” of Alaska to Mount St Elias, and the meridian of 141° to the Arctic Ocean. A somewhat similar relationship cuts off Canada from the Atlantic on the east, the north-eastern coast of Labrador belonging to Newfoundland.
Physical Geography.—In spite of these restrictions of its natural coast line on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, Canada is admirably provided with harbours on both oceans. The Gulf of St Lawrence with its much indented shores and the coast of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick supply endless harbours, the northern ones closed by ice in the winter, but the southern ones open all the year round; and on the Pacific British Columbia is deeply fringed with islands and fjords with well-sheltered harbours everywhere, in strong contrast with the unbroken shore of the United States to the south. The long stretches of sheltered navigation from the Straits of Belle Isle north of Newfoundland to Quebec, and for 600 m. on the British Columbian coast, are of great advantage for the coasting trade. The greatly varied Arctic coast line of Canada with its large islands, inlets and channels is too much clogged with ice to be of much practical use, but Hudson Bay, a mediterranean sea 850 m. long from north to south and 600 m. wide, with its outlet Hudson Strait, has long been navigated by trading ships and whalers, and may become a great outlet for the wheat of western Canada, though closed by ice except for four months in the summer. Of the nine provinces of Canada only three have no coast line on salt water, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the first may soon be extended to Hudson Bay. Ontario has a seaboard only on Hudson Bay’s southern extension, James Bay, and there is no probability that the shallow harbours of the latter bay will ever be of much importance for shipping, though Churchill Harbour on the west side of Hudson Bay may become an important grain port. What Ontario lacks in salt water navigation is, however, made up by the busy traffic of the Great Lakes.
The physical features of Canada are comparatively simple, and drawn on a large scale, more than half of its surface sloping gently inwards towards the shallow basin of Hudson Bay, with higher margins to the south-east and south-west. In the main it is a broad trough, wider towards the north than towards the south, and unsymmetrical, Hudson Bay occupying much of its north-eastern part, while to the west broad plains rise gradually to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, the eastern member of the Cordillera which follows the Pacific coast of America. The physical geography of Canada is so closely bound up with its geology that at least an outline of the geological factors involved in its history is necessary to understand the present physiography. The mountain structures originated in three great orogenic periods, the earliest in the Archean, the second at the end of the Palaeozoic and the third at the end of the Mesozoic. Geology. The Archean mountain chains, which enclosed the present region of Hudson Bay, were so ancient that they had already been worn down almost to a plain before the early Palaeozoic sediments were laid down. This ruling geological and physical feature of the North American continent has been named by E. Suess the “Canadian Shield.” Round it the Palaeozoic sands and clays, largely derived from its own waste, were deposited as nearly horizontal beds, in many places still almost undisturbed. Later the sediments lying to the south-east of this “protaxis,” or nucleus of the continent, were pushed against its edge and raised into the Appalachian chain of mountains, which, however, extends only a short distance into Canada. The Mesozoic sediments were almost entirely laid down to the west and south-west of the protaxis, upon the flat-lying Palaeozoic rocks, and in the prairie region they are still almost horizontal; but in the Cordillera they have been thrust up into the series of mountain chains characterizing the Pacific coast region. The youngest of these mountain chains is naturally the highest, and the oldest one in most places no longer rises to heights deserving the name of mountains. Owing to this unsymmetric development of North America the main structural watershed is towards its western side, on the south coinciding with the Rocky Mountains proper, but to the northward falling back to ranges situated further west in the same mountain region. The great central area of Canada is drained towards Hudson Bay, but its two largest rivers have separate watersheds, the Mackenzie flowing north-west to the Arctic Ocean and the St Lawrence north-east towards the Atlantic, the one to the south-west and the other to the south-east of the Archean protaxis. While
