Country of Judea,” running in a wide, low, irregular mountain tract to the southern limit of Palestine. Excepting the promontory of Carmel, the southern section of the Lebanon range is farther removed from the sea, leaving at its base a maritime plain more than 150 miles long, embracing the beautiful Sharon on the north, and the Land of Philistia on the south. Twenty miles to the east of the Lebanon, and at the “entering of Hamath,” the anti-Lebanon chain begins, running parallel to the former in a southwestern direction. Though of less general altitude than its companion ridge, it includes Mount Hermon, 10,000 feet high, and rivaling in the grandeur of its form and the sublimity of its scenery the loftiest peaks of Syria. Thirty-three miles south of Hermon the eastern range sweeps round the Sea of Galilee, taking the name of the Mountains of Gilead along the east bank of the Jordan, and the names of Ammon and Moab along the shore of the Dead Sea, and finally terminating with the hills of Arabia Petra at the head of the Bay of Akabah. Next to these mountain chains, the most remarkable feature in the physical geography of Palestine is the great valley, which, commencing amid the ruins of ancient Antioch, runs southward between the two parallel ridges of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon. Measuring more than 300 miles in length, and being from seven to ten miles broad, it serves as the bed of the Orontes, the Litâny, and the Jordan. Bearing the name of Cœlesyria, its southern section has an elevation of 2300 feet above the sea; but from its westerly branch, through which the Leontes flows to the village of Hasbeiya, it rapidly descends, and at its intersection with the Plain of el-Hûleh, a distance of less than twenty miles, _it is on a level with the sea_. At the Lake of Tiberias it has a depression of 653 feet, and reaches its greatest depth in the chasm of the Dead Sea, the surface of whose waters is 1312 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. To the cursory observer there is an air of extravagance in the inspired descriptions of the Promised Land. Dwelling with delight upon the fruits of the soil, the pleasures of the climate, and the grandeur of the scenery, the poets and historians of the Bible ascribe to it a marvelous fertility, and in their glowing encomiums other lands sink into insignificance when compared to the favored inheritance of Jacob, and even the rich valley of the Nile is to be cheerfully exchanged for the rich hills and valleys of Palestine.[6] Such was to be its richness, that from the “cattle on a thousand hills,” and from the thymy shrubs and the numberless bees inhabiting its venerable forests, it was to be “a land flowing with milk and honey.”[7] Such was to be its fruitfulness, that the “threshing was to reach unto the vintage, and the vintage reach unto the sowing-time.”[8]