area, would seem not to be incredible.

Of Palæ-Tyrus, or the continental Tyre, no satisfactory account can
be given, since it has absolutely left no remains, and the classical
notices on the subject are exceedingly scanty. At different periods of
its history, its limits and extent probably varied greatly. Its position
was nearly opposite the island, and in the early times it must have
been, like the other coast towns, strongly fortified; but after its
capture by Alexander the walls do not seem to have been restored, and it
became an open straggling town, extending along the shore from the
river Leontes (Litany) to Ras-el-Ain, a distance of seven miles or more.
Pliny, who wrote when its boundary could still be traced, computed the
circuit of Palæ-Tyrus and the island Tyre together at nineteen Roman
miles,[433] the circuit of the island by itself being less than three
miles. Its situation, in a plain of great fertility, at the foot of the
south-western spurs of Lebanon, and near the gorge of the Litany, was
one of great beauty. Water was supplied to it in great abundance from
the copious springs of Ras-el-Ain, which were received into a reservoir
of an octagonal shape, sixty feet in diameter, and inclosed within walls
eighteen feet in height,[434] whence they were conveyed northwards to
the heart of the city by an aqueduct, whereof a part is still remaining.

The most important city of Phoenicia towards the north was Arvad, or
Aradus. Arvad was situated, like Tyre, on a small island off the Syrian
coast, and lay in Lat. 34º 48´ nearly. It was distant from the shore
about two miles and a half. The island was even smaller than that which
formed the nucleus of Tyre, being only about 800 yards, or less than
half a mile in length, by 500 yards, or rather more than a quarter of
a mile in breadth.[435] The axis of the island was from north-west to
south-east. It was a bare rock, low and flat, without water, and without