om those of Mago.

Among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully
practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them
no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat
and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. From
Arvad to Tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central
parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying
breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and
shady woods. The whole region was independent and self-supporting, the
inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in
the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant
lands. To insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of
labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war.

The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and
from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria. Along almost the
entire eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of
defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity
by the additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebir and Litany. Its
slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees
and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and
snow. Hunters' or shepherds' paths led here and there in tortuous courses
from one side of the mountain to the other. Near the middle of the
country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications
between the littoral and the plain of the interior. They branched off on
either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south
of Qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This
region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at
one time Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the
same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the
desert.

* Magara is mentioned in the _Anastasi Papyrus_, No. 1, and
Chabas has identified it with the plain of Macra, which
Strabo places in Syria, in the neighbourhood of Eloutheros.

** The name Lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns
of Seti I.

The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by
oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of
the wolves and hyamas which infest