The coast in general is bordered by very high mountains, except near _Seleucia_, and there from mount _Pieria_ to mount _Cassius_, which is ten or fifteen miles, is quite level, leaving a passage for the river _Orontes_ to empty itself into the _Mediterranean_. Those mountains are covered with trees, shrubs, and a number of plants; so that, different from the plains, they retain their verdure all the summer. As they abound with springs these collect into little rivulets, and in a few places on that side next the sea rivers, which plentifully irrigate the plains that are between them and the sea. Behind them, on the land side, are generally extensive plains which receive great benefit from the streams that descend from the mountains, nigh to which they are well cloathed with myrtle, oleander, and other shrubs. The opposite boundaries of those plains are for the most part low, barren, rocky hills, and behind them other large plains, which though they have no water but the rain which falls in the winter, yet are exceeding fertile; and this is not improbably occasioned by the quantity of soil which must necessarily be washed down into them from the surrounding little rocky hills, by the violent rains of the winter. This intermixture of rocky eminencies and plains reaches within land about sixty or seventy miles, after which the country is generally level, from what I have been told, all the way to _Bassorah_, and is properly _Arabia Deserta_. In all _Syria_ there is but one river, (the _Orontes_) that having its rise on the land side of the high mountains, finds its way to the sea; the rest, which indeed are but few and inconsiderable, being soon absorbed by the thirsty plains through which they run, more especially as they receive but very few supplies in their passage: and even the _Orontes_, though it be swelled by a number of little brooks from the high mountains behind which it runs, and derives a farther supply from the lake of _Antioch_, yet seems as considerable a great many miles above _Antioch_, as where it empties itself into the _Mediterranean_. The seasons in this country, generally speaking, are exceeding regular, particularly at _Aleppo_, where the air is usually very healthy, and so pure and free from damps that all the inhabitants, of what rank soever, sup and sleep in their court-yards, or upon the house tops, exposed to the open air, from the end of _May_ to the middle of _September_, without suffering any inconveniency from it. However, as I shall hereafter have occasion to be more particular on this subject, I will at present only mention in general the changes of the seasons as they appear to our senses.