4 Oil 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 habits 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. A few insulated abrupt hills. Mount Gilboa, 

 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 

 chain, untilthey are lost in the stern precipitous ridges of Leba- 

 non. 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 eompacter limestone, in which the gullies worn by 

 the autumnal rains present a more direct and uniform channel. 

 The strata are horizontal or nearly so, appearing frequently through 

 extensive districts in long parallel ledges of one uniform breadth, 

 as if placed artificially one upon the other. The chief central 

 ridge of mountains, rising to a height of one thousand to one 

 thousand nine hundred feet* is covered by a growth of aromatic 



* The summit of the Mount of Olives is twenty-five hundred feet above the 

 level of the sea. 



