confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives.  One ridge—­Mount Carmel—­detached from the principal chain near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to the north-west, and finally projects into the sea.  North of this range extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones—­the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes—­an expanse of plain, a “Shephelah,” dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,—­and finally the mountains.  The region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it—­Gaza, Jaffa, Ashdod, and Ascalon—­are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens.  The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no manure and very little labour.  The higher ground and the hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun.  The valleys, too, are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished from the desert.  In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir.  The spring rains, however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.

We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state.  In the north, we have the country of the two rivers—­the Naharaim—­extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.

* The Naharaim of the Egyptians was first identified with Mesopotamia; it was located between the Orontes and the Balikh or the Euphrates by Maspero.  This opinion is now adopted by the majority of Egyptologists, with slight differences in detail.  Ed. Meyer has accurately compared the Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration of the Seleucidae.

It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era.  Wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization,