few
scattered villages on its margin."[59]

East of the Jordan are the corn-growing table-land of Bashan and the
beautiful and fertile high-lands of Gilead. In the former I have ridden
for hours, with an unbroken sea of waving wheat as far as I could see
around me, and as regards the "land of Gilead," I can confirm Mr.
Oliphant's most enthusiastic descriptions of its beauty, fertility, and
desolation.

Nor are the agricultural resources of Syria and Palestine limited to the
great irrigated plains and broad trans-Jordanic table-lands. Throughout
the country there are numerous villages shut in among bare hills, with
apparently no resource; but on closer inspection it turns out that there
are a few cultivated terraces, where tobacco and grape-vines and
vegetables are cultivated, and on a still closer inspection it is
evident that the bare mountains all around were once terraced, and
doubtless clothed with the vine.

I was once crossing a series of undulating ranges abutting on Mount
Hermon with an English tourist who was making merry at the utterly
barren appearance of "the promised land." It turned out, however, that
his attempted wit served to sharpen our observation, and we found that
all the hill-sides had once been terraced by human hands. A few miles
further on we came to Rasheiya, where the vineyards still flourish on
such terraces, and we had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that
the bare terraces, from which lapse of time had worn away the soil, were
once trellised with the vine, the highest emblem of prosperity and joy.
Similar terraces were noticed by Drake and Palmer in the Desert of
Judea, far from any modern cultivation.

It is rash to infer that because a place is desolate now, it must always
have been so, or must always remain so. The Arab historian tells us that
Salah-ed-Din, before the battle of Hattin, set fire to the forests, and
thus encircled the Crusaders with a sea of flame. Now there is scarcely
a shrub in the neighbourhood.

In wandering through that sacred land, over which the Crescent now
waves, one is amazed at the number of ruins that stud the landscape, and
show what must once have been the natural fertility of the country.
Whence has come the change? Is the blight natural and permanent? or has
it been caused by accidental and artificial circumstances which may be
only temporary? Doubtless, each ruin has its tale of horror, but all
trace their destruction to Islamism, and espe