Of the fresh-water lakes the largest and most important is the Sea of Tiberias.  This sheet of water is of an oval shape, with an axis, like that of the Dead Sea, very nearly due north and south.  Its greatest length is about thirteen and its greatest width about six miles.  Its extreme depth, so far as has been ascertained, is 27 fathoms, or 165 feet.  The Jordan flows into its upper end turbid and muddy, and issues forth at its southern extremity clear and pellucid.  It receives also the waters of a considerable number of small streams and springs, some of which are warm and brackish; yet its own water is always sweet, cool, and transparent, and, having everywhere a shelving pebbly beach, has a bright sparkling appearance.  The banks are lofty, and in general destitute of verdure.  What exactly is the amount of depression below the level of the Mediterranean remains still, to some extent, uncertain; but it is probably not much less than 700 feet.  Now, as formerly, the lake produces an abundance of fish, which are pronounced, by those who have partaken of them, to be “delicious.”

Nine miles above the Sea of Tiberias, on the course of the same stream, is the far smaller basin known now as the Bahr-el Huleh, and anciently (perhaps) as Merom.  This is a mountain tarn, varying in size as the season is wet or dry, but never apparently more than about seven miles long, by five or six broad.  It is situated at the lower extremity of the plain called Huleh, and is almost entirely surrounded by flat marshy ground, thickly set with reeds and canes, which make the lake itself almost unapproachable.  The depth of the Huleh is not known.  It is a favorite resort of aquatic birds, and is said to contain an abundant supply of fish.

The Bahr-el-Kades, or Lake of Hems, lies on the course of the Orontes, about 139 miles N.N.E. of Merom, and nearly the same distance south of the Lake of Antioch.  It is a small sheet of water, not more than six or eight miles long, and only two or three wide, running in the same direction with the course of the river, which here turns from north to north-east.  According to Abulfeda and some other writers, it is mainly, if not wholly, artificial, owing its origin to a dam or embankment across the stream, which is from four to five hundred yards in length, and about twelve or fourteen feet high.  In Abulfeda’s time the construction of the embankment was ascribed to Alexander the Great, and the lake consequently was not regarded as having had any existence in Babylonian times; but traditions of this kind are little to be trusted, and it is quite possible that the work above mentioned, constructed apparently with a view to irrigation, may really belong to a very much earlier age.