126 THE HOLY LAND. 
CHAP, supply not only the manufactories of Sidon^l 
but all other places, with materials for that 
purposed Vessels from Italy continued to 
remove it, for the glass-houses of Fenice and 
Genoa, so late as the middle of the seventeenth 
century ^ It seemed to us to be muddy, and 
mixed with various impurities : we afterwards 
regretted that we did not collect a portion, in 
order to examine whether it naturally contains 
an alkali. There is an air of something strained 
in the addition made to the story concerning the 
Phoenician mariners, of the blocks of nitre used 
as props for their caldron : Plinij may have 
added this himself, by way of explaining the 
accident that followed. Farther toward the 
south, in the east corner of the Bay oi y4cre, 
flows " THAT ANTIENT RIVER, THE RIVER 
Kishon^J' a more considerable stream than this 
of Be/us. Nothing else was observed in this 
afternoon's journey, excepting a icell, at which 
(1) Strubo says, it was carried to Sidon, to be made ready for fusion. 
Slrab. Geogr. lib. xvi. p. 1077. ed. Osun. 
(2) " Idque tantum multa per secula gignendo fuit vitro." Ibid. 
L. But. 1635. 
(3) Doubdan relates, that even in his time vessels from ItalT/ came to 
be freighted with this sand. *■' Quelques fois ; quny que fjrt rarevient, 
qaelques vuisseaux d'ltalie en out charge pour cet effect." Voy. de la 
Terre Sainlc, p. 599. 
(4) See the sublime Song of Deborah {Judges, V. 20, 21.) " They 
fought from heaven ; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. 
The river Xishon swept tliem away, that antient river, the river A'ishon/' 
