THE boundaries of Palestine are defined by the sacred writers according to the Land of Possession and the Land of Promise. The extreme length of the former is 180 miles from north to south, the average breadth 50 miles from east to west, and it has a superficial area of 14,000 square miles. The latter is 360 miles long, 100 broad, and contains 2,800 square miles, being three and a half times larger than New Jersey, twice as large as Maryland, of equal extent with South Carolina, and of exact proportion to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont combined. The limits of the lesser area are from “Dan to Beersheba” north and south, and from the Jordan to the Mediterranean east and west. The boundaries of the greater area are from the “Waters of Strife, in Kadesh,” on the south, to the “entrance of Hamath” on the north, and from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the western border of the Arabian Desert.[1] Moses describes the Land of Promise;[2] Samuel, the Land of Possession;[3] the former, what was included in the original grant; the latter, what was actually possessed by the “chosen people.” And although the twelve tribeships remained substantially the same as surveyed by Joshua, yet both David and Solomon held dominion from the Nile to the Euphrates, and in them was fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham.[4] It is the remark of an eminent writer that “there is no district on the face of the globe containing so many and such sudden transitions as Palestine, being at once a land of mountains, plains, and valleys.”[5] Far to the north, at the “entering of Hamath,” commence two parallel ranges of limestone mountains, extending southward to the Desert of Tîh and Arabia Petræa, which are branches of the ancient Taurus chain, and a continuation of that mountain tract stretching from the Bay of Issus to the Desert of Arabia, called Lebanon. The western ridge attains its greatest altitude, opposite Ba’albek, in Jebel Mukhmel, whose summit rises 13,000 feet above the level of the sea. Continuing southward to the point opposite Tyre, the chain is broken by the River Leontes flowing through a sublime gorge into the Mediterranean. Decreasing in height, but expanding in breadth, the ridge continues south of the ravine to the hills of Nazareth and the wooded cone of Tabor, where it is broken again by the great plain of Esdraelon, through which the Kishon flows to the sea, separating the hills of Galilee from the mountains of Samaria. Coming up from the Bay of ’Akka in a southeasterly direction is Mount Carmel, immediately to the south of which are the hills of Samaria. Rising from the southern border of Esdraelon, and stretching southward thirty-three miles, they terminate in Ebal and Gerizim, where the chain is broken for the third time by the Plain of Mukhnah. Beyond this vale are the mountains of Ephraim, extending to Bethel, where the Heights of Benjamin begin, which extend to the valley of the Kedron. Here the ridge takes the name of the “Hill