Baal called in vain upon their god that he might send them rain, and
here was "the altar of the Lord" which Elijah repaired.

The mountains of the south present no striking peak or headland like
Hermon and Carmel. Even Tabor belongs to the north. Ebal and Gerizim
alone, above Shechem, stand out among their fellows, and were venerated
as the abodes of deity from the earliest times. The temple-hill at
Jerusalem owed its sanctity rather to the city within the boundaries of
which it stood than to its own character. In fact, the neighbouring
height of Zion towered above it. The mountains of the south were rather
highlands than lofty chains and isolated peaks.

But on this very account they played an important part in the history of
the world. They were not too high to be habitable; they were high enough
to protect their inhabitants against invasion and war. "Mount Ephraim,"
the block of mountainous land of which Shechem and Samaria formed the
centre, and at the southern extremity of which the sacred city of Shiloh
stood, was the natural nucleus of a kingdom, like the southern block of
which Hebron and Jerusalem were similarly the capitals. Here there were
valleys and uplands in which sufficient food could be grown for the
needs of the population, while the cities with their thick and lofty
walls were strongholds difficult to approach and still more difficult to
capture. The climate was bracing, though the winters were cold, and it
reared a race of hardy warriors and industrious agriculturists. The want
of water was the only difficulty; in most cases the people were
dependent on rain-water, which they preserved in cisterns cut out of the
rock.

This block of southern mountains was the first and latest stronghold of
Israel. It constituted, in fact, the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah. Out