ical climate.

On either side of the deep Jordan cleft lies a highland of moderate
elevation, on the right that of Galilee, Samaria, and Judsea, on the
left that of Ituraea, Bashan, and Gilead. The right or western highland
consists of a mass of undulating hills, with rounded tops, composed of
coarse gray stone, covered, or scarcely covered, with a scanty soil, but
capable of cultivation in corn, olives, and figs. This region is
most productive towards the north, barer and more arid as we proceed
southwards towards the desert. The lowest portion, Judaea, is
unpicturesque, ill-watered, and almost treeless; the central, Samaria,
has numerous springs, some rich plains, many wooded heights, and in
places quite a sylvan appearance; the highest, Galilee, is a land of
water-brooks, abounding in timber, fertile and beautiful. The average
height of the whole district is from 1500 to 1800 feet above the
Mediterranean. Main elevations within it vary from 2500 to 4000 feet.
The axis of the range is towards the East, nearer, that is, to the
Jordan valley than to the sea. It is a peculiarity of the highland that
there is one important break in it. As the Lowland mountains of Scotland
are wholly separated from the mountains of the Highlands by the low
tract which stretches across from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of
Clyde, or as the ranges of St. Gall and Appenzell are divided off from
the rest of the Swiss mountains by the flat which extends from the Rhine
at Eagatz to the same river at Waldshut, so the western highland of
Palestine is broken in twain by the famous "plain of Esdraelon,"
which runs from the Bay of Acre to the Jordan valley at Beth-Shean or
Scythopolis.

East of the Jordan no such depression occurs, the highland there being
continuous. It differs from the western highland chiefly in this--that
its surface, instead of being broken up into a confused mass of rounded
hills, is a table-land, consisting of a long succession of slightly
undulating plains. Except in Trachonitis and southern Ituraea, where the
basaltic rock everywhere crops out, the soil is rich and productive, the
country in places wooded with fine trees, and the herbage luxuriant. On
the west the mountains rise almost precipitously from the Jordan valley,
above which they tower to the height of 3000 or 4000 feet. The outline
is singularly uniform; and the effect is that of a huge wall guarding
Palestine on this side from the wild tribes of the desert. Ea