marked than those on the opposite side. The prolongation of
the western range, from the Boghaz, passes in the neighbourhood
of Kal’at-ish-Shukif under the name of the Merj Arjun:
for some distance it runs along the Leontes, and then quits
it in two branches, which are almost parallel to each other,
taking as before a south-westerly direction. The eastern and
lower of these branches consists of swelling limestone hills,
and valleys covered with the prickly oak,1 occasionally showing
basaltic rocks on the eastern side. The higher and more
western range of Belad Bshirrai is undulating and cultivated,
having a succession of hill and dale thickly wooded on the
western slopes, or towards the sea, The south-western prolongation
of this and the preceding range are cut off by a
cross-range of a similar description, which, from the coast,
about four miles south of Tyre, traverses this part of the country
in a south-easterly direction as far as Safet, where it meets
the principal range belonging to the western side of the
valley. The latter quits the Merj Arjun where the separation
above mentioned takes place; and from thence it runs
southward or parallel to the Nahr Hasibiyah and the lake of
El Huleh, passing Keds Kedeh and Kubr Uairan, to Safet.
These bills are, for the most part, rounded and tame, and are
generally without trees or shrubs; they show at Kadita, as
on the shores of the lake of Tabariyeh, dark volcanic stones;
and again at Safet numerous naked volcanic cones/ Beyond
this town the principal chain becomes less marked, and the
groups sent westward from it more numerous but less defined.
In its southern prolongation from Safet, the former,
as.it approaches the waters of Tabariyeh,sends out the groups
of Ish Shagur in a western direction as far as the plains of
Acre : and again from the banks of the Jordan, southward of
the lake, a double line of groups takes the same direction
along Wadi-el-Bireh; of these the most remarkable peaks
are the wooded limestone cone of Mount Tabor, rising to
more than 1000 feet above the plain; that which is called the
mountain of precipitation beyond Nazareth; and in a line
1 Biblical Researches in Palestine, &c., by Ed. Robinson, D.D., vol. III.,
372_ 8 Ibid. pp. 336, 367.
southward of the former, the shapeless groups of Jebel-ed-
Duhy,1 with the naked peaks of Mount Gilboa. This range,
after taking, for a time, a south-westerly direction with an
elevation of about 1100 feet above the plain, sends one line of
groups towards Samaria, whilst others, also wooded, are prolonged
by Jezreel, and onward in a north-westerly direction
till they terminate with the shrub-clad Jebel Mar Elyas, or
Mount Carmel, which rises to a height of about 1200 feet at
the southern extremity of the Bay of Acre. Two parallel
ridges, or rather a rocky upland, may be said to prolong the
mountains from Gilboa southward to the borders of Arabia
Petrea. This mass is frequently broken by longitudinal
or transverse valleys; the latter generally tending east and
west; and one of these, the Wadi Suleiman, which may be
said to divide the mass into two equal portions, runs in the
lattter direction nearly in the latitude of Jericho. The
northern or higher part of the ridge first shows the groups
of Samaria, Jebel-el-Tur (Mount Gerizim), and afterwards
Mount Ebal, whose rocky ridges partly enclose the town of
Nabulus, and are crowned with ruins at an elevation of about
900 feet above the base/
Again, further south, the mountains of Ephraim continue
in the same line till the. three parallel ridges of rock and
the intervening cultivated valleys are broken by the valley
above mentioned; which afterwards takes the name of Merj
Ibn Omei'r, and is prolonged westward to Akir or Ekron/
From this place a lower ridge or offset-range curves round to
Ludd (Lydda), and from thence it runs northward till it
joins the principal range near Samaria; whilst on the eastern
side a range of steep bluff hills, nearly of equal elevation, occasionally
pierced by Wadis running eastward, but elsewhere
having precipitous flanks, enclose the valley of the Jordan as
far as Jericho. Southward of these the hills assume an arid,
desolate appearance, which increases as they advance along
the western shore of the Bead Sea, towards the extremity of
1 The little Hermon of Dr. Robinson. Travels, vol. III., p. 171. •
a MS. notes by Lieut.-Colonel M ‘Niven.
3 Dr. Robinson’s Biblical Researches, &c., vol. III., pp. 22, 23.