few ill-protected harbours, or narrow beaches lying under formidable headlands.  One river, the Nahr el-Kebir, which elsewhere would not attract the traveller’s attention, is here noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and with tolerable regularity; the others, the Leon, the Adonis,* and the Nahr el-Kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to the Mediterranean.  Olives, vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch, cypress, spruce, and cedar.  The mountain range drops in altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall.  Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a valley unlike any other in the world.  At this point the surface of the earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a chasm which has never since closed up.  A river, unique in character—­the Jordan—­flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed by it from end to end.***

* The Adonis of classical authors is now Nahr-Ibrahim.  We have as yet no direct evidence as to the Phoenician name of this river; it was probably identical with that of the divinity worshipped on its banks.  The fact of a river bearing the name of a god is not surprising:  the Belos, in the neighbourhood of Acre, affords us a parallel case to the Adonis.

** The present Nahr el-Kelb is the Lykos of classical authors.  The Due de Luynes thought he recognized a corruption of the Phoenician name in that of Alcobile, which is mentioned hereabouts in the Itinerary of the pilgrim of Bordeaux.  The order of the Itinerary does not favour this identification, and Alcobile is probably Jebail:  it is none the less probable that the original name of the Nahr el Kelb contained from earliest times the Phoenician equivalent of the Arab word kelb, “dog.”

     *** The Jordan is mentioned in the Egyptian texts under the
     name of Yorduna:  the name appears to mean the descender,
     the down-flowing.

Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*

     * This source is mentioned by Josephus as being that of the
     Little Jordan.

[Illustration:  014.jpg THE MOST NORTHERN SOURCE OF THE JORDAN, THE NAIIR-EL-HASBANY]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows down among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it mingles with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering Lake Huleh.*