The Land of Promise had been chosen by the Supreme Wisdom for the inheritance of a people destined to be unconquerable while they continued pure. It was surrounded on all sides but one by mountains and deserts, and that one was defended by the sea, which at the same time opened to it the intercourse with the richest countries of the west. On the north, opposed to the vast population of Asia Minor, it was protected by the double range of the Libanus and Antilibanus, a region of forests and defiles at all seasons almost impassable to chariots and cavalry, and during winter barred up with torrents and snows. The whole frontier to the east and south was a wall of mountain rising from a desert—a durable barrier over which no enemy, exhausted by the privations of an Asiatic march, could force their way against a brave army waiting fresh within its own confines. But even if the Syrian wastes of sand and the fiery soil of Arabia left the invaders strength to master the mountain defenses, the whole interior was full of the finest positions for defense that ever caught the soldier’s eye. [Sidenote: The Preparations for War] All the mountains sent branches through the champaign. As we spurred up the sides of Carmel, we saw an horizon covered with cloud-like hills. Every city was built on an eminence and capable of being instantly converted into a fortress. But while an army kept the field, the larger operations of strategy would have found matchless support in the course of the Jordan, the second defense of Judea; a line passing through the whole central country from north to south, with the lake of Tiberias and the lake Asphaltites at either extreme, at once defending and supplying the movements in front, flank, and rear. The territory thus defensible had an additional and superior strength in the character and habits of its population. In a space of two hundred miles long by a hundred broad, its inhabitants once amounted to nearly four millions, tillers of the soil, bold tribes, invigorated by their life of industry and connected with one another by the most intimate and frequent intercourse, under the divine command. By the law of Moses—may he rest in glory!—every man from twenty to sixty was liable to be called on for the general defense; and the customary armament of the tribes was appointed at six hundred thousand men!