We have spoken of the numerous promontories, terminations of spurs from the mountains, which break the low coast-line into fragments, and go down precipitously into the sea.  Of these there are two between Tyre and Acre, one known as the Ras-el-Abiad or “White Headland,” and the other as the Ras-en-Nakura.  The former is a cliff of snow-white chalk interspersed with black flints, and rises perpendicularly from the sea to the height of three hundred feet.[160] The road, which in some places impends over the water, has been cut with great labour through the rock, and is said by tradition to have been the work of Alexander the Great.  Previously, both here and at the Ras-en-Nakura, the ascent was by steps, and the passes were known as the Climaces Tyriorum, or “Staircases of the Tyrians.”  Another similar precipice guards the mouth of the Lycus on its south side and has been engineered with considerable skill, first by the Egyptians and then by the Romans.[161] North of this, at Djouni, the coast road “traverses another pass, where the mountain, descending to the water, has been cut to admit it."[162] Still further north, between Byblus and Tripolis, the bold promontory known to the ancients as Theu-prosopon, and now called the Ras-esh-Shakkah, is still unconquered, and the road has to quit the shore and make its way over the spur by a “wearisome ascent"[163] at some distance inland.  Again, “beyond the Tamyras the hills press closely on the sea,"[164] and there is “a rocky and difficult pass, along which the path is cut for some distance in the rock."[165]

The effect of this conformation of the country was, in early times, to render Phoenicia untraversable by a hostile army, and at the same time to interpose enormous difficulties in the way of land communication among the natives themselves, who must have soon turned their thoughts to the possibility of communicating by sea.  The various “staircases” were painful and difficult to climb, they gave no passage to animals, and only light forms of merchandise could be conveyed by them.  As soon as the first rude canoe put forth upon the placid waters of the Mediterranean, it must have become evident that the saving in time and labour would be great if the sea were made to supersede the land as the ordinary line of communication.

The main characteristics of the country were, besides its inaccessibility, its picturesqueness and its productiveness.  The former of these two qualities seems to have possessed but little attraction for man in his primitive condition.  Beauties of nature are rarely sung of by early poets; and it appears to require an educated eye to appreciate them.  But productiveness is a quality the advantages of which can be perceived by all.  The eyes which first looked down from the ridge of Bargylus or Lebanon upon the well-watered, well-wooded, and evidently fertile tract between the mountain summits and the sea, if they took no note of its marvellous and almost