On the west of the fissure the land is differently shaped. The coast is a narrow strip of land, which only extends into small plains at the mouths of the mountain streams; it is hot, moist, and unhealthy, but of great fertility. Soon the white and yellow limestone rocks of the mountains begin to rise. On these heights the air is purer and cooler, and terraces planted with myrtles and oleanders, with pines, fig-trees, and mulberries, alternate with vineyards. On the broad slopes of the loftier mountain ridges rise splendid forests of tamarisks, planes, cypresses and nut-trees, and above all magnificent cedars. Even now some trees are found here forty feet in girth and ninety feet in height.[480] Just in front of the highest ridges of rock lie green slopes, on which feed numerous flocks of black goats, disturbed by jackals, bears, and lions, dwelling in the desolate gorges. Between the mouth of the Orontes and the promontory of Carmel, which runs out far into the sea, this mountain wall, which stretches out to the sea, reaches its greatest height in the peaks of Libanus (over 10,000 feet) of which Tacitus remarks with astonishment that they retained the snow even in that hot climate.[481] Rising above the green pastures and forests, the cultivated and watered fields, this ridge with its white mantle of snow gives the appearance of a winter landscape above perpetual spring. Southward of Carmel the mountains become lower, and at the same time less precipitous and picturesque. The coast is broader and more sandy, flatter, and with fewer harbours. In the place of the steep ridges is a grassy depression (Esdraelon, Galilee), overtopped by one or two peaks only, like Tabor (1,700 feet). Then parallel ridges again form valleys, broad and fruitful and overshadowed by forests (Samaria), until the land between the Dead Sea and the coast assumes a severer and wilder character. There the table-land is rough and bare, the valleys are narrow and deep clefts, the soil is stony. From Libanus the eye looks out on the most various groups of wooded promontories and a smiling coast, but in Judæa the landscape exhibits none but severe and simple outlines. On the wide expanses only a few bushes of pale olives arise, or transparent groups of a few palm-trees. The grassy plains have made way for steppes or downs, and even the bed of the valleys is covered with fresh green only in the brief rainy season. The region round the Dead Sea is wholly desolate. Springs of sulphur and beds of bitumen point to a volcanic origin; the large proportion of salt contained in the water makes it impossible for fish to live in the lake, and the deposits of salt which cover the country round restrict the vegetation.