Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/192

 174 PALESTINE The thermometer may frequently fall during the night below the freezing point, and rise next day to 80. The mountains are often covered with snow in winter. Whilst the rainfall in the Jordan valley is very slight, the pre cipitation in the eastern mountains is again considerable ; as in western Palestine the dewfall is heavy. From this short survey it appears that Palestine is a country of strong contrasts. Of course it was the same in antiquity; climate, rainfall, fertility, and productiveness cannot have seriously altered. Even if we suppose that there was a somewhat richer clothing of wood and trees in the central districts of the country, yet on the whole the general appearance must have been much the same as at present. To the stranger from the steppes arriving at a favourable season of the year Palestine may still give the impression of a land tlowing with milk and honey. The number of cisterns and reservoirs is proof enough that it was not better supplied with water in ancient times ; but, on the other hand, the numerous ruins of places which were still flour ishing during the Roman period show that at one time (more especially in the southern districts, which now possess but few inhabited localities) cultivation must have been carried on more extensively and thoroughly. In general the country enjoyed the greatest security, and con sequently the greatest prosperity, under Western rule, which even protected the country east of Jordan (at present partly beyond the control of the Government) from the inroads of the Bedouins. The Romans also did excellent service by the construction of roads, portions of which (as well as Roman milestones and bridges) still exist in good preservation in many places. Thus it cannot be denied that the resources of the country were formerly better developed than at present. Like all the lands of the nearer East, Palestine suffers from the decay of the branches of industry which still flourished there in the Middle Ages. The harbours are not of sufficient size for large vessels ; that of Haifa alone is capable of any development. The road from Yafa to Jerusalem is the only one in the country fit for carriages. The proposal to construct a railway along this route (for which a firman was granted in 1875) is renewed from time to time ; but it will be hard to carry it out, as, in spite of the pilgrims (who, besides, are restricted to one period of the year), the passenger traffic is not large enough to be remunerative, and commercial traffic there is almost none. At the same time the formation of means of communica tion would increase the productiveness of the country. The culture of olives and export of oil are especially capable of expansion. As regards the industrial arts, souvenirs for the pilgrims, rosaries, carved work in olive wood and mother-of-pearl, ifcc., are produced at Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and to some extent are exported. Wheat from the Hauran is also shipped at Acre and elsewhere, but neither exports nor imports are commercially important. The salt farming, which could easily be carried on at the Dead Sea and the deposit of salt to the south of it, is hampered by the difficulty of bringing the produce up the steep paths to the top of the mountains. In the valley of the Jordan all the products of the tropics could with little trouble be cultivated. Bee-keeping still receives attention, but might also be extended. Political Geography. Evidence of an early occupation of Palestine is afforded by the stone monuments (cromlechs and circles of stones), which are found more especially in the country east of Jordan, but also in the country to the west. To what period they belong in this part of the world is as doubtful as it is elsewhere ; but it may be remarked that stories of a gigantic primeval population once prevailed in Palestine. To what race these people may have belonged is, however, unknown. For thousands of years Palestine was an object of conflict between the vast monarchies of western Asia. As Egypt, whenever she sought to extend her power, was from the very position of the country naturally led to make herself mistress of the east coast of the Mediterranean, so, on the other hand, there were no physical boundaries to prevent the westward advance into Palestine of the Asiatic empires. For both Egypt and the East indeed the country formed a natural thoroughfare, in time of war for the forces of the contend ing powers, in time of peace for the trading caravans which carried on the interchange of African and Asiatic merchandise. One of the oldest of the still extant historical documents in regard to the geography of Palestine is the inscription on the pylones of the temple of Karnak, on which Thothmcs III. (in the beginning of the 16th century B.C.) has handed down an account of his military expedition to western Asia. Many of the topographical names of Palestine there mentioned are certainly hard to identify ; a number, how ever, such as Iphu for Yafa, Luden for Lydda, Magedi for Megiddo, etc., are beyond dispute. The lists show that these names are of extreme antiquity, dating from before the Hebrew immigration. There is also a hieratic papyrus of the 14th century B.C., which contains a description of a carriage journey through Syria made by an Egyptian officer, possibly for the collection of tribute. Bethshean and the Jordan, among other localities, appear to be men tioned in this narrative, but the identification of most of the names is very dubious. Another foreign source of in formation as to the geography of Palestine can only be alluded to the records contained in the cuneiform inscrip tions, which mention a number of the most important towns: Akku (Akko, Acre), Du ru (Dor), Magidu (Megiddo), Yappu (Jaffa), Asdudu (Ashdod), Iskaluna (Askalon), Hazzatu (Ghazza, Gaza), Altaku (Eltheke), Ursalimmu (Jerusalem), and Samarina (Samaria), and of course only from the 8th century, when they came into hostile contact with Assyria the countries of Judah, Moab, Ammon, and Edom. The information supplied by the Old Testament enables us to form only an extremely imperfect conception of the earliest ethnographic condition of the country. The population to the east of the Jordan was already, it is clear, sharply marked off from that to the west. In the latter region dwelt an agricultural people which had already reached no inconsiderable degree of civilization. Closely related to the Phoenicians, they were distinguished as Canaanites from the name of their country, which originally applied to the maritime belt and afterwards to the whole cis- Jordan territory (vol. iv. p. 62). Though for particular reasons they are placed among the Hamitic races in Gen. x., many modern investigators are of opinion that, according to our principles of ethnographic classifica tion, they were Semitic ; their language, at any rate, was very similar to Hebrew. The separation of Canaanites from Semites may have been due, in part at least, to the fact that a deep contrast made itself felt between them and the Hebrews, though they were only, perhaps, an older result of Arabic emigration. The enumeration of the names of the various branches of the Canaanites leaves it an extremely difficult task to form a clear idea of their tribal distribution ; names of separate sections, too, like that of the Amorites, are sometimes applied to the Canaanites as a whole. The Amorites were at any rate the most powerful tribe ; they dwelt in the southern portion of Canaan, as well as more especially in the northern parts of the country east of Jordan. About the others nothing more can be said save that the Perizzites, Hivites, and Girgashites dwelt in the heart of Canaan and the Jebusites near Jerusalem. The Philistines occupied