Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/30

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON runs the plaintive lament—"Between me and thee is the mountain." The country is more crowded with towering peaks than Palestine or Greece, but it is more fertile than either. No other region of equal size has such a variety of vegetable life; no other land is more healthful; and to those of us who have lived in the shadow of Lebanon, none is more beautiful.

Syria, as we have defined it, includes one entire vilâyet, or province, of the Turkish Empire and parts of three others. Its extreme northern portion is included in the great Vilayet of Aleppo, which stretches far across the desert to Mesopotamia. Anti-Lebanon and most of Hollow Syria lie within the Vilayet of esh-Shâm, or "Syria." This important province, whose capital is Damascus, takes in all the arable land east of the Jordan as far as the southern end of the Dead Sea. The independent Mutesarrifîyet, or sub-province, of Lebanon is practically co-extensive with this range, but touches the Mediterranean only for a few miles and has no seaport. Almost the entire coast belongs to the Vilayet of Beirut, which reaches from Mount Akra, a hundred and fifty miles north of the provincial capital, to within sight of the harbor of Jaffa and includes nearly all of Palestine west of the Jordan River.

In the absence of any census, we can hardly do more than guess at the population of Syria. It is probably above two million. The Turkish [ 8 ]