History of Phoenicia | Page 7

two to ten miles. The rock crops out from it in places and it is broken
between Tortosa and Hammam by a line of low hills running parallel
with the shore.[20] The principal streams which water it are the
Nahr-el-Melk, or Badas, six miles south of Jebili, the Nahr Amrith, a
strong running brook which empties itself into the sea a few miles
south of Tortosa (Antaradus), the Nahr Kublé, which joins the Nahr
Amrith near its mouth, and the Eleutherus or Nahr-el-Kabir, which
reaches the sea a little north of Arka. Of these the Eleutherus is the
most important. "It is a considerable stream even in summer, and in the
rainy season it is a barrier to intercourse, caravans sometimes
remaining encamped on its banks for several weeks, unable to
cross."[21] The soil of the plain is shallow, the rock lying always near
the surface; the streams are allowed to run to waste and form marshes,
which breed malaria; a scanty population scarcely attempts more than

the rudest and most inefficient cultivation; and the consequence is that
the tract at present is almost a desert. Nature, however, shows its
capabilities by covering it in the spring-time from end to end with a
"carpet of flowers."[22]
From the edges of the plains, and sometimes from the very shore of the
sea, rise up chalky slopes or steep rounded hills, partly left to nature
and covered with trees and shrubs, partly at the present day cultivated
and studded with villages. The hilly region forms generally an
intermediate tract between the high mountains and the plains already
described; but, not unfrequently, it commences at the water's edge, and
fills with its undulations the entire space, leaving not even a strip of
lowland. This is especially the case in the central region between
Berytus and Arka, opposite the highest portion of the Lebanon; and
again in the north between Cape Possidi and Jebili, opposite the more
northern part of Bargylus. The hilly region in these places is a broad
tract of alternate wooded heights and deep romantic valleys, with
streams murmuring amid their shades. Sometimes the hills are
cultivated in terraces, on which grow vines and olives, but more often
they remain in their pristine condition, clothed with masses of tangled
underwood.
The mountain ranges, which belong in some measure to the geography
of Phœnicia, are four in number--Carmel, Casius, Bargylus, and
Lebanon. Carmel is a long hog-backed ridge, running in almost a
straight line from north-west to south-east, from the promontory which
forms the western protection of the bay of Acre to El-Ledjun, on the
southern verge of the great plain of Esdraelon, a distance of about
twenty-two miles. It is a limestone formation, and rises up abruptly
from the side of the bay of Acre, with flanks so steep and rugged that
the traveller must dismount in order to ascend them,[23] but slopes
more gently towards the south, where it is comparatively easy of access.
The greatest elevation which it attains is about Lat. 32º 4´, where it
reaches the height of rather more than 1,200 feet; from this it falls
gradually as it nears the shore, until at the convent, with which the
western extremity is crowned, the height above the sea is no more than
582 feet. In ancient times the whole mountain was thickly wooded,[24]

but at present, though it contains "rocky dells" where there are "thick
jungles of copse,"[25] and is covered in places with olive groves and
thickets of dwarf oak, yet its appearance is rather that of a park than of
a forest, long stretches of grass alternating with patches of woodland
and "shrubberies, thicker than any in Central Palestine," while the
larger trees grow in clumps or singly, and there is nowhere, as in
Lebanon, any dense growth, or even any considerable grove, of forest
trees. But the beauty of the tract is conspicuous; and if Carmel means,
as some interpret, a "garden" rather than a "forest," it may be held to
well justify its appellation. "The whole mountain-side," says one
traveller,[26] "was dressed with blossoms and flowering shrubs and
fragrant herbs." "There is not a flower," says another,[27] "that I have
seen in Galilee, or on the plains along the coast, that I do not find on
Carmel, still the fragrant, lovely mountain that he was of old."
The geological structure of Carmel is, in the main, what is called "the
Jura formation," or "the upper oolite"--a soft white limestone, with
nodules and veins of flint. At the western extremity, where it overhangs
the Mediterranean, are found chalk, and tertiary breccia formed of
fragments of chalk and flint. On the north-east of the mountain, beyond
the Nahr-el-Mukattah, plutonic rocks appear, breaking through the
deposit strata, and forming the beginning of the basalt formation which
runs