My traveling companion from Port Said to Marseilles and from Liverpool to New York was Solomon Elia, who had kindly shown me through the Israelite Alliance School in Jerusalem.  I reached Philadelphia the same day the ship landed in New York, but was detained there with brethren on account of a case of quinsy.  I reached home on the fourteenth of December, after an absence of five months and three days, in which time I had seen something of fourteen foreign countries, having a very enjoyable and profitable trip.

CHAPTER VIII.

GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE.

This section of country has been known by several names.  It has been called the “Land of Canaan,” the “Land of Israel,” the “Land of Promise,” the “Land of the Hebrews,” and the “Holy Land.”  Canaan was simply the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, extending from Mt.  Lebanon on the north to the Desert of Arabia on the south.  Dan was in the extreme northern part, and Beer-sheba lay in the southern end of the country, one hundred and thirty-nine miles distant.  The average width of the land is about forty miles, and the total area is in the neighborhood of six thousand miles.  “It is not in size or physical characteristics proportioned to its moral and historical position as the theater of the most momentous events in the world’s history.”  Palestine, the land occupied by the twelve tribes, included the Land of Canaan and a section of country east of the Jordan one hundred miles long and about twenty-five miles wide, occupied by Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh.  The Land of Promise was still more extensive, reaching from “the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates,” embracing about sixty thousand square miles, or a little less than the five New England States.  The country is easily divided into four parallel strips.  Beginning at the Mediterranean, we have the Maritime Plain, the Mountain Region, the Jordan Valley, and the Eastern Table-Land.

The long stretch of lowland known as the Maritime Plain is divided into three sections.  The portion lying north of Mt.  Carmel was called Phoenicia.  It varies in width from half a mile in the north to eight miles in the south.  The ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon belonged to this section.  Directly east of Mt.  Carmel is the Plain of Esdraelon, physically a part of the Maritime Plain.  It is an irregular triangle, whose sides are fourteen, sixteen, and twenty-five miles respectively, the longest side being next to Mt.  Carmel.  Here Barak defeated the army of Sisera under Jabin, and here Josiah, king of Judah, was killed in a battle with the Egyptians under Pharaoh-necoh.

The Plains of Sharon and Philistia, lying south of Carmel, are usually regarded as the true Maritime Plain.  Sharon extends southward from Carmel about fifty miles, reaching a little below Jaffa, and has an average width of eight miles.  The Zerka, or Crocodile river, which traverses this plain, is the largest stream of Palestine west of the Jordan.  There are several other streams crossing the plain from the mountains to the sea, but they usually cease to flow in the summer season.  Joppa, Lydda, Ramleh, and Caesarea belong to this plain.  Herod the Great built Caesarea, and spent large sums of money on its palace, temple, theater, and breakwater.