On either side of the deep Jordan cleft lies a highland of moderate elevation, on the right that of Galilee, Samaria, and Judsea, on the left that of Ituraea, Bashan, and Gilead.  The right or western highland consists of a mass of undulating hills, with rounded tops, composed of coarse gray stone, covered, or scarcely covered, with a scanty soil, but capable of cultivation in corn, olives, and figs.  This region is most productive towards the north, barer and more arid as we proceed southwards towards the desert.  The lowest portion, Judaea, is unpicturesque, ill-watered, and almost treeless; the central, Samaria, has numerous springs, some rich plains, many wooded heights, and in places quite a sylvan appearance; the highest, Galilee, is a land of water-brooks, abounding in timber, fertile and beautiful.  The average height of the whole district is from 1500 to 1800 feet above the Mediterranean.  Main elevations within it vary from 2500 to 4000 feet.  The axis of the range is towards the East, nearer, that is, to the Jordan valley than to the sea.  It is a peculiarity of the highland that there is one important break in it.  As the Lowland mountains of Scotland are wholly separated from the mountains of the Highlands by the low tract which stretches across from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of Clyde, or as the ranges of St. Gall and Appenzell are divided off from the rest of the Swiss mountains by the flat which extends from the Rhine at Eagatz to the same river at Waldshut, so the western highland of Palestine is broken in twain by the famous “plain of Esdraelon,” which runs from the Bay of Acre to the Jordan valley at Beth-Shean or Scythopolis.

East of the Jordan no such depression occurs, the highland there being continuous.  It differs from the western highland chiefly in this—­that its surface, instead of being broken up into a confused mass of rounded hills, is a table-land, consisting of a long succession of slightly undulating plains.  Except in Trachonitis and southern Ituraea, where the basaltic rock everywhere crops out, the soil is rich and productive, the country in places wooded with fine trees, and the herbage luxuriant.  On the west the mountains rise almost precipitously from the Jordan valley, above which they tower to the height of 3000 or 4000 feet.  The outline is singularly uniform; and the effect is that of a huge wall guarding Palestine on this side from the wild tribes of the desert.  Eastward the tableland slopes gradually, and melts into the sands of Arabia.  Here water and wood are scarce; but the soil is still good, and bears the most abundant crops.