between high cliffs, and cutting through the main ridge of the Antilibanus between the Zebdany plain and Suk, the Abila of the ancients.  From Suk the river flows through a narrow but lovely valley, in a course which has a general direction of south-east, past Ain Fijoh (where its waters are greatly increased), through a series of gorges and glens, to the point where the roots of the Antilibanus sink down upon the plain, when it bursts forth from the mountains and scatters.  Channels are drawn from it on either side, and its waters are spread far and wide over the Merj, which it covers with fine trees and splendid herbage.

One branch passes right through the city, cutting it in half.  Others irrigate the gardens and orchards both to the north and to the south.  Beyond the town the tendency to division still continues.  The river, weakened greatly through the irrigation, separates into three main channels, which flow with divergent courses towards the east, and terminate in two large swamps or lakes, the Bahret-esh-Shurkiyeh and the Bahret-el-Kibli-yeh, at a distance of sixteen or seventeen miles from the city.  The Barada is a short stream, its entire course from the plain of Zebdany not much exceeding forty miles.

The Jordan is commonly regarded as flowing from two sources in the Huleh or plain immediately above Lake Merom, one at Banias (the ancient Paneas), the other at Tel-el-Kady, which marks the site of Laish or Dan.  But the true highest present source of the river is the spring near Hasbeiya, called Nebaes-Hasbany, or Eas-en-Neba.  This spring rises in the torrent-course known as the Wady-el-Teim, which descends from the north-western flank of Hermon, and runs nearly parallel with the great gorge of the Litany, having a direction from north-east to south-west.  The water wells forth in abundance from the foot of a volcanic bluff, called Eas-el-Anjah, lying directly north of Hasbeiya, and is immediately used to turn a mill.  The course of the streamlet is very slightly west of south down the Wady to the Huleh plain, where it is joined, and multiplied sevenfold, by the streams from Banais and Tel-el-Kady, becoming at once worthy of the name of river.  Hence it runs almost due south to the Merom lake, which it enters in lat. 33 deg. 7’, through a reedy and marshy tract which it is difficult to penetrate.  Issuing from Merom in lat. 33 deg. 3’, the Jordan flows at first sluggishly southward to “Jacob’s Bridge,” passing which, it proceeds in the same direction, with a much swifter current down the depressed and narrow cleft between Merom and Tiberias, descending at the rate of fifty feet in a mile, and becoming (as has been said) a sort of “continuous waterfall.”  Before reaching Tiberias its course bends slightly to the west of south for about two miles, and it pours itself into that “sea” in about lat. 32 deg. 53’.  Quitting the sea in lat. 32 deg. 42’, it finally enters the track called the Ghor, the still lower chasm or cleft which intervenes between Tiberias