Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/533

 PALAESTINA. Jhose boundaries, as do the sacred writers and Josephus, we may now take a general view of its physical features which hare always so much to do with the formatinn of the character of the inha- bitants. It is well described in its principal fea- tures, in the book of Deuteronomy, as " 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 mayest dig brass" (viii. 7 — 9; comp. xi. 11, 12). The great variety of its natural productions must be ascribed to the diversified cha- racter of its surface and the natural richness of its soil, which was obviously taxed to the utmost by the industry of its numerous inhabitants; for there is no part of the hill country, however at present desolate and depopulated, which does not bear evi- dences of ancient agricultural labour in its scarped rocks and ruined terrace- walls ; while in the vicinity of its modern villages, the rude traditionary style of husbandry, unimproved and unvaried for 3000 years, enables the traveller to realise the ancient fertility of this highly favoured land, and the oc- cupations of its inhabitants, as well as the genius of their poetry, all whose imasres are borrowed from agricultural and pastoral pursuits. As the peculiar characteristic feature in the geography of Greece is the vast proportion of its sea-border to its superficial area, so the peculiarity of the geography of Palestine may be said to be the undue proportion of mountain, or rather hill country, to its estent. In the districts of Tripoli, AkJca, and Damascus, three descriptions of soil prevail. In general that of the mountainous parts of Palestine and central Syria is dry and stony, being formed in a great measure from the debris of rocks, of which a large portion of the surface of the districts of Lebanon, the Hauran, and Leclja, with the mountainous countries of Judaea, are composed ; it is mixed, however, with the alluvium constantly brought down by the irrigating streams. The second and richest district are the plains of Es- draelon, Zabulon, Baalbek, part of the Decapolis, and Damascus, as well as the valleys of the Jordan and Orontes, which for the most part consist of a fat loamy soil. Being almost without a pebble, it becomes, when dry, a fine brown earth, like garden mould, which, when saturated by the rains, is almost a quagmire, and in the early part of the summer becomes a marsh: when cultivated, most abundant crops of tobacco, cotton, and grain are obtained. The remainder of the territory chiefly consists of the plains called Barr by the Arabs, and Midbar by the Hebrews, both words signifying simply a tract of land left entirely to nature, and being applied to the pasture tracts about almost every town in Syria, as well as to those spots where vege- tation almost entirely fails. Such spots prevail in the tracts towards the eastern side of the country, where the soil is mostly an indurated clay, with irregular ridges of limestone hills separating different parts of the surface. The better description of soil is occasionally diversified by hill and dale, and has very much the appearance of some of our downs, but is covered with the liquorice plant, mixed with aromatic shrubs, and occasionally some dwarf trees, such as the tamarisk and acacia. Many of the tracts eastward of the Jordan (Peraea) are of this description, particularly those near the Hauran, PALAESTINA. 517 which, under the name of Roman Arabia, had Bozra for its capital. The inferior tracts are frequently coated with pebbles and black flints, having Utile, and sometimes no vegetation. Such are the greater portions of the tracts southward of Gaza and Hebron, and that part of the pashalick which borders upon Arabia Deserta, where scarcity of water has produced a wilderness, which at best is only capable of nourishing a limited number of sheep, goats, and camels : its condition is the worst in summer, at which season little or no rain falls throughout the eastern parts of Syria. Owing to the inequahty of its surface, Palestine has a great variety of temperature and climate, which have been distributed as follows. — (1) The cold; (2) warm and humid; (3) warm and dry. The first belongs principally to the Lebanon range and to Mount Hermon, in the extreme north of the country, but is shared in some measure by the mountain districts of Nablics, Jerusalem, and Hebron, where the winters are often very severe, the springs mild, and a refreshing breeze tempers the summer heat. The second embraces the slopes adjoining the coast of the Mediterranean, together with the adjacent plains of Akka, Jaffa, and Gaza ; also those in the interior, such as Esdraelon, the valley of the Jordan, and part of Peraea. The third prevails in the south-eastern parts of Syria, the contiguity of which to the arid deserts of burning sand, exposes them to the furnace-blasts of the sirocco untempered by the humid winds which pre- vail to the west of the central highlands, while the depression of the southern part of the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea gives to the plain of Jericho and the districts in the vicinity of that sea an Egyptian climate. (Col. Chesney, Expeditivn to the Euphrates, §•0. vol. L pp. 533—537.) II. Geology, Natural Divisions, and Pko- DUCTIONS. The general geographical position of Palestine is well described in the following extract : — " That great mountain chain known to the ancients under the various names of Imaus, Caucasus, and Taurus, which extends due east and west from China to Asia Minor; this chain, at the point where it enters Asia Minor, throws off to the southward a subor- dinate ridge of hills, which forms the barrier be- tween the Western Sea and the plains of Syria and Assyria. After pursuing a tortuous course for some time, and breaking into the parallel ridges of Libanus and Antilibanus, it runs with many breaks and divergencies through Palestine and the Arabian peninsula to the Indian Ocean. One of the most remarkable of these breaks is the great plain of Esdraelon, the battle-field of the East. From this point ... the ridge or mountainous tract extends, without interruption, to the south end of the Dead Sea, or further. This whole tract rises gradually towards the south, forming the hill country of Ephraim and Judaii, until, in the vicinity of Hebron, it attains an altitude of 3250 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. At a point exactly opposite to the extreme north of the Dead Sea, i. e. due west from it, where the entire ridge has an elevation of about 2710 feet, and close to the saddle of the ridge, a very remarkable feature of this rocky pro- cess, so to call it, occurs. The apjwarance is as if a single, but vast wave of this sea of rock, rising and swelling gradually from north to south, had been suddenly checked in its advance, and, after a