so much as a foot deep. On the other hand, rain is expected during the
winter-time, and the entire line of coast is visited for some months
with severe storms and gales, accompanied often by thunder and violent
rain,[24] which strew the shore with wrecks and turn even insignificant
mountain streams into raging torrents. The storms come chiefly from the
west and north-west, quarters to which the harbours on the coast are
unfortunately open.[25] Navigation consequently suffers interruption;
but when once the winter is past, a season of tranquillity sets in, and
for many months of the year--at any rate from May to October[26]--the
barometer scarcely varies, the sky is unclouded, and rain all but
unknown.

As the traveller mounts from the coast tract into the more elevated
regions, the climate sensibly changes. An hour's ride from the plains,
when they are most sultry, will bring him into a comparatively cool
region, where the dashing spray of the glacier streams is borne on the
air, and from time to time a breeze that is actually cold comes down
from the mountain-tops.[27] Shade is abundant, for the rocks are often
perpendicular, and overhand the road in places, while the dense foliage
of cedars, or pines, or walnut-trees, forms an equally effectual screen
against the sun's noonday rays. In winter the uplands are, of course,
cold. Severe weather prevails in them from November to March;[28] snow
falls on all the high ground, while it rains on the coast and in the
lowlands; the passes are blocked; and Lebanon and Bargylus replenish the
icy stories which the summer's heat has diminished.

The vegetable productions of Phoenicia may be best considered under the
several heads of trees, shrubs, herbs, flowers, fruit-trees, and garden
vegetables. The chief trees were the palm-tree, the sycamore, the
maritime pine, and the plane in the lowlands; in the highlands the