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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Perhaps it is because the maps from 

 which children used to learn Bible geog- 

 raphy were on a large scale that most 

 of us have failed to realize how narrow 

 were the limits within which took place 

 all those great doings that fill the books 

 of Samuel and Kings. Just in the same 

 way the classical scholar who visits 

 Greece is surprised to find that so small 

 a territory sufificed for so many striking 

 incidents and for the careers of so many 

 famous men. 



little; natural wealth 



Palestine is a country poor in any nat- 

 ural resources. There are practically no 

 minerals, no coal, no iron, no copper, no 

 silver, though recently some oil wells 

 have been discovered in the Jordan Val- 

 ley. Neither are there any large forests, 

 and though the land may have been better 

 wooded in the days of Joshua than it is 

 now, there is little reason to think that 

 the woods were of trees sufficiently large 

 to constitute a source of wealth. A com- 

 paratively small area is fit for tillage. 



To an Arab tribe that had wandered 

 through a barren wilderness for 40 weary 

 years, Canaan may well have seemed a 

 delightful possession ; but many a county 

 in Iowa, many a department in France, 

 could raise more grain or wine than all 

 the Holy Eand. 



PLAIN OF ESDRAELON 



There is one stretch of fertile, level 

 land 20 miles long and from 3 to 6 miles 

 wide — the Plain of Esdraelon. But with 

 this exception it is only in the bottoms 

 and on the lower slopes of a few valleys, 

 chiefly in the territory of Ephraim from 

 Bethel northward and along the shores 

 of the Bay of Acre, that one sees corn- 

 fields and olive yards and orchards. Little 

 wine is now grown. 



Such wealth as the country has con- 

 sists in its pastures, and the expression 

 "a. land flowing with milk and honey" ap- 

 propriately describes the best it has to 

 offer, for sheep and goats can thrive on 

 the thin herbage that covers the hills, and 

 the numerous aromatic plants furnish 

 plenty of excellent food for the bees ; but 

 it is nearly all thin pasture, for the land 

 is dry and the soil mostly shallow. The 



sheep and goats vastly outnumber the 

 oxen. Woody Bashan, on the east side 

 of Jordan, is still the region where one 

 must look for the strong bulls. 



SEEN THROUGH A GOLDEN HAZE 



Palestine is not a beautiful country. 

 The classical scholar finds charms every- 

 where in Greece, a land consecrated to 

 him by the genius of poets and philoso- 

 phers, although a great part of Greece is 

 painfully dry and bare. So, too, the 

 traveler who brings a mind suffused by 

 reverence and piety to spots hallowed b} 

 religious associations sees the landscapes 

 of the Holy Land through a golden haze 

 that makes them lovely. But the scenery 

 of the Holy Land, taken as a whole (for 

 there are exceptions presently to be no- 

 ticed), is inferior, both in form and in 

 color, to that of northern and middle 

 Italy, to that of Norway and Scotland, 

 to that of the coasts of Asia Minor, to 

 that of many parts of California and 

 Washington. 



The hills are flat-topped ridges, with a 

 monotonous sky-line, very few of them 

 showing any distinctive shape. Not a 

 peak anywhere, and Tabor the only sum- 

 mit recognizable by its form. They are 

 all composed of gray or reddish-gray 

 limestone, bare of wood, and often too 

 stony for tillage. Between the stones or 

 piles of rock there are low shrubs, and 

 in the few weeks of spring masses of 

 brilliant flowers give rich hues to the 

 landscape ; but for the rest of the year 

 all is gray or brown. The grass is with- 

 ered away or is scorched brown, and 

 scarcely any foliage is seen on the tops 

 or upper slopes of the rolling hills. It 

 is only in some of the valleys that one 

 finds villages nestling among olive groves 

 and orchards where plum and peach and 

 almond blossoms make spring lovely. 



Arid indeed is the land. The traveler 

 says with the Psalmist : "My soul longs in 

 a dry, parched land, wherein no water 

 is." Wells are few, springs still fewer, 

 and of brooks there are practically none, 

 for the stony channels at the bottom of 

 the glens have no water except after a 

 winter rainstorm. There may probably 

 have been a more copious rainfall 20 or 

 30 centuries ago, when more wood clothed 



