=Its Fertility.= Upper Galilee was also a land of great fertility. The one limitation was the profusion of rocks strewn especially over the northern part. But if the Lebanons have poured their stones over northern Galilee, they have compensated with the wealth of waters which run through the valleys and break out in springs or else are scattered in dashing showers and deposited in heavy dews upon its rich soil. Where wars and conquest have not denuded the land, trees grow to the summits of the hills and grass and flowers flourish everywhere in greatest profusion. It is a land of plenty, sunshine, beauty, and contentment. Significant is the fact that it figures so little in Israel's troubled history, for happy is the land that has no history. Josephus's statement that in his day Galilee had a population of nearly three millions is undoubtedly an exaggeration. Even though, as in some parts of the land, to-day, the villages almost touched each other and no part of the land lay idle, Galilee could not have supported more than four or five hundred thousand inhabitants (_cf._ Masterman, _Studies in Galilee_, 131-134). =Characteristics of Lower Galilee.= Lower Galilee possesses the fertility of upper Galilee in even greater measure. With a lower elevation and slightly warmer climate it bears a large variety of trees and fruits. Its valleys are also broader and lower and enriched with the soil washed down from the hills. The broad, low plain of Asochis (the present Sahel el-Buttauf) lies a little north of the heart of lower Galilee and from it valleys radiate to the northeast, southwest, and southeast. Another broad plain runs northeast from the Plain of Esdraelon to the neighborhood of Nazareth and Mount Tabor, and east of Tabor still another extends down to the Jordan River. The rounded top of Mount Tabor commands a marvellous view of lower Galilee. Across the fertile fields to the northeast lies the Sea of Galilee, shut in by its steep banks, and beyond it the mountain plateau of the Jaulan.^{(8)} Across the valley to the south is the Hill of Moreh and the Samaritan hills beyond.^{(9)} Two perennial brooks, the Wady Fejjas and the Wady el-Bireh, flow down through southeastern Galilee into the Jordan. The result is that lower Galilee is made up of a series of irregular hills (of which the Nazareth group, a little south of the centre, is the chief) separated by a network of broad, rich, intersecting plains. It combines the vistas and large horizons of the north with the fruitfulness of the plains. Here many different types of civilization meet and mingle. Instead of being remote and provincial, as is sometimes mistakenly supposed, lower Galilee is close to the heart of Palestine and open to all the varied influences which radiate from that little world. It is also intersected by a network of little wadys running in every direction from its open valleys and through its low-lying hills. Thus it was