cedar, Aleppo pine, oak, walnut, poplar, acacia, shumac, and carob. We
have spoken of the former abundance of the palm. At present it is found
in comparatively few places, and seldom in any considerable numbers.
It grows singly, or in groups of two or three, at various points of the
coast from Tripolis to Acre, but is only abundant in a few spots more
towards the south, as at Haifa, under Carmel, where "fine date-palms"
are numerous in the gardens,[29] and at Jaffa, where travellers remark
"a broad belt of two or three miles of date-palms and orange-groves
laden with fruit."[210] The wood was probably not much used as timber
except in the earliest times, since Lebanon afforded so many kinds of
trees much superior for building purposes. The date-palm was also valued
for its fruit, though the produce of the Phoenician groves can never
have been of a high quality.

The sycamore, or sycamine-fig, is a dark-foliaged tree, with a gnarled
stem when it is old;[211] it grows either singly or in clumps, and much
more resembles in appearance the English oak than the terebinth does,
which has been so often compared to it. The stem is short, and sends
forth wide lateral branches forking out in all directions, which renders
the tree very easy to climb. It bears a small fig in great abundance,
and probably at all seasons, which, however, is "tasteless and
woody,"[212] though eaten by the inhabitants. The sycamore is common
along the Phoenician lowland, but is a very tender tree and will not
grow in the mountains.

The plane-tree, common in Asia Minor, is not very frequent either in
Phoenicia or Palestine. It occurs, however, on the middle course of the
Litany, where it breaks through the roots of Lebanon,[213] and also
in many of the valleys[214] on the western flank of the mountain. The
maritime pine (_Pinus maritama_) extends in forests here and there along