On the coasts of Syria were settled the tribes of the Arvadites, Giblites and Sidonians (I. 344). Their land extended from the mouth of the Eleutherus (Nahr el Kebir) in the north to the promontory of Carmel in the south. A narrow strip of coast under Mount Lebanon, from 10 to 15 miles in breadth and some 150 miles in length, was all that they possessed. Richly watered by the streams sent down from Lebanon to the sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. The Eleutherus is followed to the south by the Adonis (Nahr el Ibrahim), and this by the Lycus (Nahr el Kelb); then follow the Tamyras (Nahr Damur), the Bostrenus (Nahr el Auli[63]), the Belus (the Sihor Libnath of the Hebrews, now Nahr Naman), and lastly the Kishon. Above the shore rise hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on Lebanon splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the vast forests (I. 338) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as Tacitus says,[64] and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit of Lebanon. Ammianus speaks of the region under Lebanon as full of pleasantness and beauty. The upper slopes of the mountain furnish pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. The high mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the Roman Cæsars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks across Lebanon[65]), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before them lay the sea. At an early period they must have become familiar with that element. The name of the tribe which the Hebrew Scriptures call the "first-born of Canaan" means "fishermen." The places on the coast found the sea the easiest means of communication. Thus the sea, so rich in islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the Sidonians, Giblites and Arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages the fishermen and navigators of the coast.