The valleys and plains of Syria are full of rich vegetable mould, particularly the plain of Damascus, which is brilliantly verdant, though surrounded by deserts, the barren uniformity of which is relieved on the east by the broken columns and ruined temples of Palmyra (Tadmor). The Assyrian wilderness, however, is not everywhere absolutely barren. In the spring-time it is covered with a thin but vivid verdure, mixed with fragrant aromatic herbs, of very short duration. When these are burnt up, the unbounded plains resume their wonted dreariness. The country, high and low, becomes more barren towards the Holy Land, yet even here some of the mountains—as Carmel, Bashan, and Tabor—are luxuriantly wooded, and many of the valleys are fertile, especially the valley of the Jordan, which has the appearance of pleasure-grounds with groves of wood and aromatic plants, but almost in a state of nature. One side of the Lake of Tiberias in Galilee is savage; on the other there are gentle hills and wild romantic vales, adorned with palm-trees, olives, and sycamores—a scene of calm solitude and pastoral beauty. Jerusalem stands on a declivity encompassed by severe stony mountains, wild and desolate. The greater part of Syria is a desert compared with what it formerly was. Mussulman rule has blighted this fair region, once flowing with milk and honey—the Land of Promise. Farther south, desolation increases; the valleys become narrower, the hills more denuded and rugged, till, south of the Dead Sea, their dreary aspect announces the approach of the desert. The valley of the Jordan affords the most remarkable instance known of the depression of the land below the general surface of the globe. This hollow, which extends from the Gulf of Akabah on the Red Sea to the bifurcation of Lebanon, is 620 feet below the Mediterranean at the Sea of Galilee, and the acrid waters of the Dead Sea have a depression of 1300 feet.[36] The lowness of the valley had been observed by the ancients, who gave it the descriptive name of Cœlo-Syria, “Hollow Syria.” It is absolutely walled in by mountains between the Dead Sea and Lebanon, where it is from ten to fifteen miles wide.[37] A shrinking of the strata must have taken place along this coast of the Mediterranean, from a sudden change of temperature in the earth’s crust, or perhaps in consequence of some of the internal props giving way, for the valley of the Jordan is not the only instance of a dip of the soil below the sea-level: the small bitter lakes on the Isthmus of Suez are cavities of the same kind, as well as the Natron lakes on the Libyan desert, west from the delta of the Nile. CHAPTER VII. Africa—Table-Land—Cape of Good Hope and Eastern Coast—Western Coast— Abyssinia—Senegambia—Low Lands and Deserts.