The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria.  Along almost the entire eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebir and Litany.  Its slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow.  Hunters’ or shepherds’ paths led here and there in tortuous courses from one side of the mountain to the other.  Near the middle of the country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the littoral and the plain of the interior.  They branched off on either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south of Qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at one time Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the desert.

     * Magara is mentioned in the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, and
     Chabas has identified it with the plain of Macra, which
     Strabo places in Syria, in the neighbourhood of Eloutheros.

     ** The name Lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns
     of Seti I.

The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned lions known to Asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course, crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called Shaua, which is probably the Sannin of our times.  While one of these roads, running north along the lake of Yamuneh and through the gorge of Akura, then proceeded along the Adonis* to Byblos, the other took a southern direction, and followed the Nahr el-Kelb to the sea.

* This is the road pointed out by Renan as the easiest but least known of those which cross the Lebanon; the remains of an Assyrian inscription graven on the rocks near Ain el- Asafir show that it was employed from a very early date, and Renan thought that it was used by the armies which came from the upper valley of the Orontes.

Towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters:  a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory.  Commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they offered access into the very heart of Phoenicia.  Invaders would encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself