into the plains of Antioch and Tripoli, of Tyre and Acre.*

Such is the general appearance of the country which Moses taught his people to expect, while they traversed the burning and dreary wilderness :— For the land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot as a garden of herbs; but the land whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.' The striking contrast, in this short but glowing description, between the land of Egypt, where the people of Israel had so long and cruelly suffered, and the inheritance promised to their fathers, where Jehovah reserved for them and their children every blessing that a nation can desire, must have made a deep impression upon their minds. In Egypt, the eye is fatigued with wandering over an immense flat plain, intersected with stagnant canals, and studded with mud-walled towns and cottages; seldom refreshed by a single shower; exhibiting, for three months, the singular spectacle of an extensive sheet of water, from which the towns and villages that are built upon the higher grounds, are seen like islands in the midst of the ocean-marshy and rank with vegetation for three others—and parched and dusty the remainder of the year. They had seen a population of naked and sun-burnt peasants, tending their buffaloes, or driving their camels, or sheltering themselves from the overwhelming heat beneath the shade of the thinly scattered date or sycamore trees; below, natural or artificial lakes, cultivated fields, and vacant grounds of considerable extent-overhead, a burning sun, darting his oppressive rays from an azure sky, almost invariably free from clouds. In that weary

*Volney's Travels in Syria and Egypt, vol. i. p. 202, Per.h edition. Hasselquist's Travels, pp. 125, 127.

+ Deut. xi. 11.

land,' they were compelled to water their corn fields with the foot; a painful and laborious employment, rendered necessary by the want of rain. Those vegetable productions which require a greater quantity of moisture than is furnished by the periodical inundations of the Nile, they were obliged to refresh with water drawn out of the river by machinery, and lodged afterwards in capacious cisterns. When the melons, sugar-canes, and other vegetables that are commonly disposed in rills, required to be refreshed, they struck out the plugs which are fixed in the bottom of the cisterns; and then the water gushing out, is conducted from one rill to another by the husbandman, who is always ready, as occasion requires, to stop and divert the torrent, by turning the earth against it with his foot, opening at the same time with his mattock a new trench to receive it.* Such is the practice to which Moses alludes; and it continues to be observed without variation to this day. But from this fatiguing uniformity of surface, and toilsome method of watering their grounds, the people of Israel were now to be relieved; they were going to possess a land of hills and valleys, clothed with woods-beautified and enriched with fountains of water-divided by rivers, streams, and brooks, flowing cool and pure from the summits of their mountains-and, with little attention from the cultivator, exciting the secret powers of vegetation, and scattering plenty wherever they came. The highlands, which are not cultivated by irrigation, are to this day more prized in the East than those which must be watered by means of dykes and canals; both because it requires no labour, which in the low country is necessary, to watch the progress of the water through the channels, in order to give it a proper direction, and because every elevation produces an agreeable change of temperature, where the hills dis

* Shaw's Travels, vol. ii p. 267.

play the loveliness of paradise, while the plains are burnt up with insufferable heat.*

Sometimes the drought of summer renders frequent waterings necessary even in Judea. On such occasions, the water is drawn up from the wells by oxen, and carried by the inhabitants in earthen jars, to refrigerate their plantations on the sides of the hills. The necessity to which the Jewish husbandman is occasionally reduced, to water his grounds in this manner, is not inconsistent with the words of Moses which distinguish the Holy Land from Egypt, by its drinking rain from heaven, while the latter is watered by the foot. The inspired prophet alludes, in that passage, not to gardens of herbs, or other cultivated spots on the steep declivities of the hills and mountains, where, in so warm a climate as that of Canaan, the deficiency of rain must be supplied by art, but to their corn fields, which, in Egypt, are watered by artificial canals, in the manner just described; in Canaan by the rain of heaven.

The lands of Egypt, it must be granted, are supplied with water by the overflowing of the Nile, and are so saturated with moisture, that they require no more watering for the producing of corn, and several other vegetables; while the gardens require fresh supplies every three or four days. But then it is to be remembered, that immense labour was requisite to conduct the waters of the river to many of their lands; and those works of the ancient kings of Egypt, by which they distributed the streams of the Nile through their whole country, are celebrated by Maillet, as the most magnificent and the most admirable of all their undertakings; and those labours which they caused their subjects undergo, doubtless were designed to prevent much heavier fatigues, to which they must otherwise

* Morier's Travels in Persia, vol. i. p. 295.

+ Pococke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 61.

+ Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, Let. ii, p. 45.

have submitted. The words of Moses, addressed to the people of Israel, probably contained a significancy and force of which we can form but a very imperfect idea, and which has not of late been at all understood. Maillet was assured, that the large canal which filled the cisterns of Alexandria, and is at least fifteen leagues long, was entirely paved, and its sides were lined with brick, which were as perfect as in the days of the Romans. If bricks were used in the construction of their more ancient canals,-a supposition extremely probable; and if those made by the people of Israel were designed for purposes of this kind,-they must have heard with a peculiar satisfaction, that the country to which they were going required no canals to be dug, no bricks to be prepared for paving and lining them, in order to water it,—labours which had so greatly embittered their lives in Egypt. This idea is favoured by the account which Moses gives of their former servitude: hard bondage, in mortar and brick, is joined with other services of the field,* among which may be numbered the digging and cleansing of their canals; and in this view, the mortar and brick are very naturally joined with those laborious and standing operations.

The surface of Canaan is as diversified as the face of Egypt is uniform.† Skirted with plains of moderate extent, and separated by narrow vales, the mountains continually change their forms and appearance with their levels and situation. The forests with which some of them are crowned; the woods which adorn the plains and sides of the hills, where the fir, the larch, and the oak, the box, the laurel, the myrtle, and the yew, mingle their various foliage; the streams

*Exodus i. 14.

The whole of the scenery,' says Richardson, since we entered Palestine, amply confirms the language of Scripture, that this is a land flowing with milk and honey-a land for flocks, and herds, and bees, and fitted for the residence of men whose trade, like the pa triarchs of old, was in cattle.'-Travels, vol. ii. p. 375.

G.

R

of cool and limpid water that precipitate themselves from the rocks, or trickle down the narrow vales to refresh the parched fields in their way to the sea,produce an air of liveliness which delights the traveller, wearied and disgusted with the melancholy nakedness of Egypt. On some declivities he meets with cottages, even in its present state of desolation, surrounded with fig-trees and vineyards; and the sight, observes a modern writer, repays the fatigue of a road, which, by rugged paths, conducts him from the bottom of the valleys to the summits of the mountains. The inferior branches, which extend to the northward of Aleppo, present, on the contrary, nothing but naked rocks, without verdure and without soil. Southward of Antioch, and on the sea-coast, the sides of the hills are adapted to the cultivation of the vine and the olive. Mount Casius, however, which rises above Antioch to an immense height, must be excepted. On the side of the desert, the summits and declivities of this chain exhibit almost one series of white rocks, where the aching eye of the wanderer can scarcely discover a single spot of verdure, on which it may repose. Towards Lebanon the mountains are high, but covered in many places with as much earth as fits them for cultivation. Among the crags of the rocks, the beautiful and far-famed cedar waves its lofty top, and extends its powerful arms, surrounded by the fir and the oak, the fig and the vine. On the road to Jerusalem, the mountains are not so lofty nor so rugged, but become fitter for tillage. They rise again to the south-east of mount Carmel; are covered with woods, and afford very picturesque views: but advancing toward Judea they lose their verdure,—the valleys become narrow, dry, and stony, and terminate at the Dead Sea in a pile of desolate rocks, precipices, and caverns. These vast excavations, some of which will contain fifteen hundred men, are the grottoes of Engeddi, which have been a refuge to the oppressed or