of his successor, Philip Carteret. Nor did Dampier visit the west coast of New Britain or realize its small extent on that side. He was prevented from prosecuting his discoveries by the discontent of his men and the state of his ship. In May 1700 he was again at Timor, and thence he proceeded homeward by Batavia (4th July–17th October) and the Cape of Good Hope. In February 1701 he arrived off Ascension Island, when the vessel foundered (21st–24th February), the crew reaching land and staying in the island till the 3rd of April, when they were conveyed to England by some East Indiamen and warships bound for home. In 1703–1707 Dampier commanded two government privateers on an expedition to the South Seas with grievous unsuccess; better fortune attended him on his last voyage, as pilot to Woodes Rogers in the circumnavigation of 1708–1711. On the former venture Alexander Selkirk, the master of one of the vessels, was marooned at Juan Fernandez; on the latter Selkirk was rescued and a profit of nearly £200,000 was made. But four years before the prize-money was paid Dampier died (March 1715) in St Stephen’s parish, Coleman Street, London. Dampier’s accounts of his voyages are famous. He had a genius for observation, especially of the scientific phenomena affecting a seaman’s life; his style is usually admirable—easy, clear and manly. His knowledge of natural history, though not scientific, appears surprisingly accurate and trustworthy.
See Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World (1697); his Voyages and Descriptions (1699), a work supplementary to the New Voyage; his Voyage to New Holland in . . . 1699 (1703, 1709); also Funnell’s Narrative of the Voyage of 1703–1707; Dampier’s Vindication of his Voyage (1707); Welbe’s Answer to Captain Dampier’s Vindication; Woodes Rogers, Cruising Voyage Round the World (1712). (C. R. B.)
DAN (from a Hebrew word meaning “judge”), a tribe of
Israel, named after a son of Jacob and Bilhah, the maid of
Rachel. The meaning of the name (referred to in Gen. xxx. 5 seq.,
xlix. 16) connects Dan with Dinah (“judgment”), the daughter
of Leah, whose story in Gen. xxxiv. (cf. xlix. 5 seq.) seems to
point to an Israelite occupation of Shechem, a treacherous
massacre of its Canaanite inhabitants by Simeon and Levi, and
the subsequent scattering of the latter. But, historically, the
occupation of Shechem, whether by conquest (Gen. xlviii. 22) or
purchase (xxxiii. 19), is as obscure as the conquest of central
Palestine itself (see Joshua), and the true relation between Dan
and Dinah is uncertain. The earliest seats of Dan lay at Zorah,
Eshtaol and Kirjath-jearim, west of Jerusalem, whence they were
forced to seek a new home, and a valuable narrative detailing
some of the events of the move is preserved in the story of the
sanctuary of the Ephraimite Micah (q.v.). Laish (Leshem) was
taken with the sword and re-named Dan (see below). Here a
sanctuary was founded under the guardianship of Jonathan,
the grandson of Moses, which survived until the “captivity of
the land” (by Tiglath-Pileser IV. in 733–732), or, according to
another notice, until the fall of Shiloh (Judg. xviii. 30 seq.). Dan
formed the northern limit of the land,[1] and with Abel (-beth-Maacah)
was an old place renowned for Israelite lore (2 Sam.
xx. 18; on the text see the commentaries). Little can be made
of Dan’s history. The reference to it as a seafaring folk (Judg.
v. 17) is difficult, and it is uncertain whether its character as
represented in Gen. xlix. 17, Deut. xxxiii. 22, refers to its earlier
or later seat. The post-exilic accounts of its southern border
would make it part of Judah, and both of them are in tradition
the greatest of the tribes in the wanderings in the wilderness.
Dan was subsequently either regarded as the embodiment of
wickedness or entirely ignored; late speculation that the
Antichrist should spring from it appears to be based upon an
interpretation of Gen. xlix. 17 (see further R. H. Charles,
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, pp. 128 seq.).
A brief record of the Danite migration is found in some old detached fragments which K. Budde (Richter und Samuel) ingeniously arranges thus:—Judg. i. 34 (Amorite pressure); Josh. xix. 47a (see the Septuagint), 47b; Judg. i. 35. The position of Judg. xvii. seq. (after the stories of Samson) may imply that the Philistines, not the Amorites, caused the migration (cf. 1 Sam. vii. 14, where the two ethnical terms interchange). The Mosaic priesthood and the reference to Shiloh suggest that the story of Eli may have belonged to this cycle of narratives; and the spoliation of the unknown sanctuary of the Ephraimite Micah and the character of the fierce Puritan tribesmen connect Dan with the problems of the tribes of Simeon and Levi. Dan’s northern home lay near Beth-rehob, which appears to have been Aramean in David’s time (2 Sam. x. 6), and it is possible that the migration has been antedated (cf. similarly the case of Jair, Num. xxxii. 41, Judg. x. 3-5). The Tyrian artificer sent to Solomon by Hiram was partly of Danite descent (2 Chron. ii. 13 seq.; but of Naphtali, so 1 Kings vii. 14); and of the two workers in brass who took part in the building of the tabernacle in the desert, one was Danite (Oholiab, Ex. xxxi. 6), while the other appears to have been Calebite (Bezalel, ib., v. 2; 1 Chron. ii. 20). The Kenites, too, have been regarded as a race of metal-workers (see Cain, Kenites), and there is evidence which would show that Danites, Calebites and Kenites were once closely associated in tradition.
See S. A. Cook, Critical Notes, Index, s.v.: E. Meyer, Israeliten, pp. 525 seq. (S. A. C.)
DAN, a town of ancient Israel, near the head-waters of the
Jordan, inhabited before its conquest by the Danites by a peaceful
commercial population who called their city Laish or Leshem
(Josh. xix. 47, Judg. xviii.). It appears to have been even at
this early period a sacred city, the shrine of Micah being removed
hither, and it was chosen by Jeroboam as the site of one of his
calf-shrines. It makes the north limit of Palestine in the proverbial
expression “from Dan to Beersheba.” The town was
plundered by Benhadad of Damascus, and appears from that
time to have gradually declined. Its site is sought in the mound
called Tell-el-Kadi, “the hill of the judge” (Dan = “judge”
in Hebrew), though weighty authorities incline to place it 4 m.
east of this, at Banias, the old Caesarea Philippi. (See above.)
DANA, CHARLES ANDERSON (1819–1897), American journalist, was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, on the 8th of August 1819. At the age of twelve he became a clerk in his uncle’s general store at Buffalo, which failed in 1837. In 1839 he entered Harvard, but the impairment of his eyesight in 1841 forced him to leave college, and caused him to abandon his intention of entering the ministry and of studying in Germany. From September 1841 until March 1846 he lived at Brook Farm, where he was made one of the trustees of the farm, was head waiter when the farm became a Fourierite phalanx, and was in charge of the phalanstery’s finances when its buildings were burned in 1846. He had previously written for (and managed) the Harbinger, the Brook Farm organ, and had written as early as 1844 for the Boston Chronotype. In 1847 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune, and in 1848 he wrote from Europe letters to it and other papers on the revolutionary movements of that year. Returning to the Tribune in 1849, he became its managing-editor, and in this capacity actively promoted the anti-slavery cause, seeming to shape the paper’s policy at a time when Greeley was undecided and vacillating. In 1862 his resignation was asked for by the board of managers of the Tribune, apparently because of wide temperamental differences between him and Greeley. Secretary of War Stanton immediately made him a special investigating agent of the war department; in this capacity Dana discovered frauds of quartermasters and contractors, and as the “eyes of the administration,” as Lincoln called him, he spent much time at the front, and sent to Stanton frequent reports concerning the capacity and methods of various generals in the field; he went through the Vicksburg campaign and was at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and urged the placing of General Grant in supreme command of all the armies in the field. Dana was second assistant-secretary of war in 1864–1865, and in 1865–1866 conducted the newly-established and unsuccessful Chicago Republican. He became the editor and part-owner of the New York Sun in 1868, and remained in control of it until his death at Glen Cove, Long Island, New York,
- ↑ On the late phrase “Dan to Beersheba” as the extreme points of religious life in Israel, see H. W. Hogg, Expositor, viii. 411-421 (1898); and for a complete discussion of the tribe, his art. “Dan” in Encyc. Bib.
