History of Phoenicia | Page 4

seemed to him a not unsuitable termination to the historical efforts which his resignation of the Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford, and his entrance upon a new sphere of labour, bring naturally to an end.
The author wishes to express his vast obligations to MM. Perrot and Chipiez for the invaluable assistance which he has derived from their great work,[3] and to their publishers, the MM. Hachette, for their liberality in allowing him the use of so large a number of MM. Perrot and Chipiez' Illustrations. He is also much beholden to the same gentlemen for the use of charts and drawings originally published in the "G��ographie Universelle." Other works from which he has drawn either materials or illustrations, or both, are (besides Movers' and Kenrick's) M. Ernest Renan's "Mission de Ph��nicie," General Di Cesnola's "Cyprus," A. Di Cesnola's "Salaminia," M. Ceccaldi's "Monuments Antiques de Cypre," M. Daux's "Recherches sur les Emporia Ph��niciens," the "Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum," M. Clermont- Ganneau's "Imagerie Ph��nicienne," Mr. Davis's "Carthage and her Remains," Gesenius's "Scriptur? Lingu?que Ph?nici? Monumenta," Lortet's "La Syrie d'aujourd'hui," Serra di Falco's "Antichit�� della Sicilia," Walpole's "Ansayrii," and Canon Tristram's "Land of Israel." The difficulty has been to select from these copious stores the most salient and noteworthy facts, and to marshal them in such a form as would make them readily intelligible to the ordinary English reader. How far he has succeeded in doing this he must leave the public to judge. In making his bow to them as a "Reader" and Writer "of Histories,"[4] he has to thank them for a degree of favour which has given a ready sale to all his previous works, and has carried some of them through several editions.
CANTERBURY: August 1889.

HISTORY OF PH?NICIA
CHAPTER I
THE LAND
Ph?nicia--Origin of the name--Spread of the name southwards--Real length of Ph?nicia along the coast--Breadth and area--General character of the region--The Plains--Plain of Sharon--Plain of Acre--Plain of Tyre--Plain of Sidon--Plain of Berytus--Plain of Marathus--Hilly regions--Mountain ranges--Carmel--Casius--Bargylus --Lebanon--Beauty of Lebanon--Rivers--The Litany--The Nahr-el- Berid--The Kadisha--The Adonis--The Lycus--The Tamyras--The Bostrenus--The Zaherany--The Headlands--Main characteristics, inaccessibility, picturesqueness, productiveness.
Ph?nic��, or Ph?nicia, was the name originally given by the Greeks--and afterwards adopted from them by the Romans--to the coast region of the Mediterranean, where it faces the west between the thirty-second and the thirty-sixth parallels. Here, it would seem, in their early voyagings, the Pre-Homeric Greeks first came upon a land where the palm-tree was not only indigenous, but formed a leading and striking characteristic, everywhere along the low sandy shore lifting its tuft of feathery leaves into the bright blue sky, high above the undergrowth of fig, and pomegranate, and alive. Hence they called the tract Ph?nicia, or "the Land of Palms;" and the people who inhabited it the Ph?nicians, or "the Palm-tree people."
The term was from the first applied with a good deal of vagueness. It was probably originally given to the region opposite Cyprus, from Gabala in the north--now Jebili--to Antaradus (Tortosa) and Marathus (Amrith) towards the south, where the palm-tree was first seen growing in rich abundance. The palm is the numismatic emblem of Aradus,[1] and though not now very frequent in the region which Strabo calls "the Aradian coast-tract,"[2] must anciently have been among its chief ornaments. As the Grecian knowledge of the coast extended southward, and a richer and still richer growth of the palm was continually noticed, almost every town and every village being embosomed in a circle of palm groves, the name extended itself until it reached as far south at any rate as Gaza, or (according to some) as Rhinocolura and the Torrens ?gypti. Northward the name seems never to have passed beyond Cape Posideium (Possidi) at the foot of Mount Casius, the tract between this and the range of Taurus being always known as Syria, never as Ph?necia or Ph?nic��.
The entire length of the coast between the limits of Cape Possidi and Rhinocolura is, without reckoning the lesser indentations, about 380 miles, or nearly the same as that of Portugal. The indentations of the coast-line are slight. From Rhinocolura to Mount Carmel, a distance of 150 miles, not a single strong promontory asserts itself, nor is there a single bay of sufficient depth to attract the attention of geographers. Carmel itself is a notable headland, and shelters a bay of some size; but these once passed the old uniformity returns, the line being again almost unbroken for a distance of seventy-five miles, from Haifa to Beyrout (Berytus). North of Beyrout we find a little more variety. The coast projects in a tolerably bold sweep between the thirty-fourth parallel and Tripolis (Tarabulus) and recedes almost correspondingly between Tripolis and Tortosa (Antaradus), so that a deepish bay is formed between Lat. 34o 27�� and Lat. 34o 45��, whence the line again runs northward unindented for fifty miles, to beyond Gabala (Jebili).