﻿4 On the Valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. 



affected the present surface of Palestine. The vine, so important 

 among the ancient productions of Palestine, has almost wholly- 

 disappeared ; the olive lingers only in occasional patches, and has 

 deserted many of its old localities ; the pomegranate is rarely seen. 

 The Jordan too has diminished its volume, changed its hahits and 

 in some places altered its direction ; while the remarkable valley- 

 through which it runs, has, it must be inferred, undergone a 

 thorough and radical change. 1 must again repeat, that the want 

 of any series of recorded geological observations on the country, 

 leaves us to make out these conjectures from the phenomena that 

 now present themselves, whose deviation from those preceding 

 them, can be satisfactorily determined only by future careful ob- 



servations. 



Palestine is strongly marked by mountain ranges. The chief 

 line, the great back-bone of the country, in the New Testament 

 called "the hill country of Judea," starts from the desert, runs 

 north and south through the whole length of Judea and Samaria, 

 then bending in a northwesterly direction terminates at the sea- 

 coast in the steep cliffs of the promontory of Mount Carmel, eight 



miles south of Acre. 



Mo 



Little Hermon and Mount Tabor, sentinels upon the northern skirt 

 of the great plain of Esdraelon, occupy the southern part of Gali- 

 lee. The Lebanon chain commences a little northward of these 

 detached hills, in the low swells around Nazareth, rising to a con- 

 siderable elevation as they stretch forward into the volcanic Safid 

 cham, until they are lost in the stern precipitous ridges of Leba- 



All of these mountains are of limestone formation ; those of 

 the southern or central chain are steep ridges of a friable rock, in 

 mineral character approaching chalk, and having been manifestly 

 subjected to a very high temperature. The Lebanon range is 

 composed of compacter limestone, in which the gullies worn by 

 the autumnal rains present a more direct and uniform channel. 



non. 



parallel 



appeann 



r dl r !ft ' aUy ° nC UI ™ th0 °' her - The «*« central 



hnn ° H ,, a ' nS J r ' Sing '° a hei 8 hl of °"<= 'housand .o one 



thousand mne hnnd re d fee,. is covered by a growd, of aromatic 



* The summit of the JVfmmr r.f ru- 



«rel of the sea. ° hVeS " twent J- fi ^ hundred feet above the 



