ARTICLE VII.

PHYSICAL PREPARATION FOR ISRAEL IN

PALESTINE.

BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

I.

DURING the months of December and January last, I have been permitted to traverse the entire length of Palestine under exceptionally favorable circumstances, and have had brought to my attention several points in which the physical features of the country have had an important bearing on its history. These I will briefly summarize, leaving the fuller discussion of them for a period of greater leisure. Our route led from Beirut, across the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains, to Damascus, thence over the south shoulder of Mount Hermon to Banias (Cæsarea Philippi) and the ancient Dan, thence south to Lake Galilee, Nazareth, Jezreel, Samaria, Shechem, Shiloh, Jerusalem, Jericho, Mar Saba, Bethlehem, Hebron, the south end of the Dead Sea, Engedi, then back to Jerusalem and down to Joppa.

I. ISOLATION IN A CENTRAL LOCALITY.

The peculiar development of Israel demanded isolation in a peculiar country. Otherwise they would have been amalgamated with the more numerous, more powerful, and more civilized heathen around them, and their exclusive religious development would have been rendered extremely difficult, if not impossible. At the same time, if their religion was to become universal, the theater of historical

development must be at a pivotal point of the great national movements of the world's development. Both these ends were secured in Palestine by a remarkable combination of geological and physical forces which has commanded. the admiration of all profound students of the subject.

The "great fault of the Jordan Valley" was pronounced by Humboldt "the most remarkable geological feature anywhere to be found in the world"; while Karl Ritter, in his elaborate geographical publications ever returned to this cleft in the earth's surface, as the most significant fact in the natural history of the globe. This "fault," or crack in the crust of the earth, extends from Antioch on the Orontes River, in Syria, to the south end of the Gulf of Akaba, on the east side of the Sinaitic Peninsula, a distance of about one thousand miles. The Lebanon Mountains, Western Palestine, and the Desert of Sinai are on one side of it. The Anti-Lebanon Range and the elevated plains of Moab and Northern Arabia are on the other side. Along the whole dividing line the rocky strata were fractured, and the eastern edge of the western portion slipped down, while the western edge of the eastern mass was elevated.

The depression is most pronounced in the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Lake Huleh and the marshy plain extending north to Cæsarea Philippi are almost exactly at sea-level; but Lake Galilee is more than 600 feet, and the Dead Sea 1,292 feet, below the level of the Mediterranean. In its deepest place the bottom of the Dead Sea is 2,600 feet below ocean-level, and since the heights of Moab and those near Hebron are more than 3,000 feet above the Mediterranean, it follows that the bottom of the Dead Sea is depressed nearly 6,000 feet below the general land-level. The rock strata on the surface of the plains of Moab correspond to those on the western margin of the Jordan Valley and of the Dead Sea. Western Palestine is a gigantic arch

of rock strata, with Shiloh, Jerusalem, and Hebron on its summit, its eastern foot at the bottom of the Dead Sea, and its western base below the plains of Philistia on the Medi

terranean.

The western arch, however, has one remarkable interruption in Palestine. This appears in the plain of Esdraelon, which occupies a "cross-fault," extending from the Jordan a little south of Lake Galilee to the Mediterranean at the north end of Mount Carmel. Nazareth lies a little to the north of this cross-fracture, while the Mount of Precipita tion, over which his fellow-townsmen were on the point of casting Jesus, is a portion of the northern cliff facing Esdraelon produced by the geographical fault, or fracture. Mount Tabor, a few miles to the east, is an outlying mass of rock which did not settle down with the rest of the valley, and is still connected by a low ridge with the main mass to the north.

The summit of the valley of Esdraelon, between Mount Tabor and Jezreel, is only about 500 feet above the Mediterranean. The depression, therefore, affords the natural line of communication between the shores of this sea and the country east of the Jordan. This was the main route. followed by the caravans from the valley of the Euphrates through Damascus to the Mediterranean at Acre, and thence along the shore to Egypt. It was this which made the valley of Esdraelon the great battle-field between the east and the west. Recently an English company has surveyed and partly graded a railway from Acre through this valley to the Jordan, and thence to Damascus. Thus, from first to last, it has been a great highway for the nations.

Yet, upon either side the ascent to the hills is so rapid, and the country so inaccessible, that there has been little temptation for military occupation by foreigners. When Napoleon led his expedition from Egypt to Syria, he established his headquarters for a while on the plain at Ramleh, near

Joppa, and later besieged Acre, and made his headquarters near Jezreel; while his ablest general Kléber fought an important battle at the base of Mount Tabor. Meanwhile Jerusalem was left undisturbed in its isolated position among the mountains of Judæa. When asked why he did not capture Jerusalem, Napoleon replied that it was so out of the way that it was of no general military significance. There can be no question, that the warning of the prophets against alliances with the great nations in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates conformed to the highest principles of both military and political wisdom. There was little motive for Assyria to capture Jerusalem, except as she was an ally of Egypt. Her strength was in the natural independence of her isolation.

Next to the Caucasus, Judæa is, from a military point of view, one of the most easily defended regions in the world. The approaches from the west are through steep and circuitous mountain gorges, in which an attacking army is in constant peril from surprises. The trails from Samaria to Jerusalem are, even now, almost impassable to horses, while the desert and difficult roads protect it from the south. Joshua's march from Jericho up the valley to the summit. at Ai and Bethel, a few miles north of Jerusalem, exhibited the perfection of military tactics. From this point of vantage he could sweep along the central ridge to the south, and easily occupy the main positions of importance. Providence was not altogether blind in leading the children of Israel through Moab to the head of the Dead Sea and to the passes that lead thence to the central part of the Promised Land.

North of the valley of Esdraelon the land was almost equally protected. The approach to Lake Galilee by the Jordan Valley is difficult. The entire east-and-west "fault" facing Esdraelon from the north presents a precipitous front which is easily defended. The mountains on both the east and the

west side of the valley, beginning at the south end of Lake Galilee and extending to the ancient Dan, are lofty, and inaccessible to a military force; while north of Dan the valley between Lebanon and Mount Hermon is so deeply filled with the débris of a recent volcanic eruption that it is practically impassable. The Litany River, which rises near Baalbeck and flows south through the valley between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, as though it would join the waters of the Jordan Valley, meets this barrier, and suddenly turns at a right angle to join the Mediterranean near Sidon. The observant traveler cannot fail to be impressed with the completeness of this barrier as he crosses its southern projection near Dan, and takes a glance at the successive steps with which the volcanic material rises across the valley to the north.

Thus, with this barrier of rough basaltic rocks to the north, the precipitous mountain walls on the east and west, and the desert on the south, Palestine was specially prepared to be the home of a "Peculiar People." At the same time the great highway between the east and the west passed through its center, but so walled in that there was little temptation for an armed force to interfere with peaceable people on either side. So that, as Origen forcibly maintained, Palestine, though insignificant in itself, was so centrally situated that it was the fittest of all places for the dissemination of Christianity to the ends of the earth.

II. THREE GREAT MIRACLES.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, and the falling of the walls of Jericho, are three notable miracles upon which the physical history of Palestine sheds interesting light. These were, doubtless, what are styled "mediate miracles." That is, they are miracles in which the secondary agencies used by the Divine Will are clearly traceable. This, however, does