RIVERS. 



301 



stream to be from eighty to one hundred feet. The guides supposed it now to be ten or 

 twelve feet deep. The current was so strong, that even Komeh, a stout swimmer of the 

 Nile, was carried down several yards in crossing." Upon the authority of some phrases 

 in the English version of the Scriptures, which perhaps do not express the sense of the 

 original Hebrew, it has been generally supposed that the Jordan periodically inundated 

 the country in its neighbourhood, at, and for some time after, the Israelitish conquest of 

 it. If this were so, either the river must have worn for itself a deeper bed, or the quan- 

 tity of rain in Palestine must have largely diminished, for there is now no overflow of its 

 banks. At present, the " swellings of Jordan" one of the phrases alluded to amount 

 only to a slight annual rise. Copious rains descend upon the mountains round its sources, 

 and the melting of the snows of Lebanon supply numerous temporary torrents ; but these 

 contributions are received into the capacious basins of the lakes Merom and Tiberias, and 

 are there spread over an extensive surface, so as to prevent the level of the river from 

 rising into inundation. 



In exactly the-' same manner, the great Canadian lakes, prevent any rise to the St. 

 Lawrence, by the immense floods that rush into them in the spring spreading over their 

 vast beds, and producing only an almost inappreciable elevation of their level. Lebanon, 



Natural Bridge of Ain el Leban. 



the feeder of the Jordan from its internal reservoirs, along with " Abana and Pharpar, 

 rivers of Damascus," and the Orontes, gives birth to many rapid and brawling streams, 

 and a thousand cascades, when its snows melt, which strikingly display the erosive power 

 of running water. Deep passages have been cut in the rocks, bestrided by natural arches, 

 like the rock-brige of Virginia. Of this description is the natural bridge over the Ain 

 el Leban, rising nearly two hundred feet above the torrent which has gradually dug the 

 excavation, as annually the spring has renewed its strength. The brook flows into the 

 Beyrout river, and its channel would be quite dry in summer, were it not for the impe- 

 diments its mountain course presents. It was the spring season, the time of the melting 

 of the snow, when the monarch of Israel, during his temporary exile from the throne, 

 retreated for a refuge towards the fastnesses of Lebanon. He saw the torrents falling 



