a little to the south of Aleppo. The bare, round-backed, chalky or rocky
ranges, which here continually succeed one another, are divided only by
narrow tortuous valleys, which run chiefly towards the Euphrates or
the lake of Antioch. This mountain tract is succeeded by a region of
extensive plains, separated from each other by low hills, both equally
desolate. The soil is shallow and stony; the streams are few and of
little volume; irrigation is thus difficult, and, except where it can be
applied, the crops are scanty. The pistachio-nut grows wild in places;
Vines and olives are cultivated with some success; and some grain is
raised by the inhabitants; but the country has few natural advantages,
and it has always depended more upon its possession of a carrying trade
than on its home products for prosperity.

West and south-west of this region, between it and the Mediterranean,
and extending southwards from Mount Amanus to the latitude of Tyre, lies
Syria Proper, the Coele-Syria of many writers, a long but comparatively
narrow tract of great fertility and value. Here two parallel ranges of
mountains intervene between the coast and the desert, prolific parents
of a numerous progeny of small streams. First, along the line of the
coast, is the range known as Libanusin the south, from lat. 33° 20' to
lat. 34° 40', and as Bargylus in the north, from lat. 34° 45' to the
Orontes at Antioch, a range of great beauty, richly wooded in places,
and abounding in deep glens, foaming brooks, and precipices of a
fantastic form. [PLATE VII., Fig 2.] More inland is Antilibanus,
culminating towards the south in Hermon, and prolonged northward in the
Jebel Shashabu, Jebel Biha, and Jebel-el-Ala, which extends from near
Hems to the latitude of Aleppo. More striking than even Lebanon at its
lower extremity, where Hermon lifts a snowy peak into the air during
most of the year, it is on the whole inferior in beauty to the coast
range, being bleaker, more stony, and less broken up by dells and