the Plain of Gennesaret, are all alike formed of the débris washed down from the hills, and covering the native rock, which is never seen. The soil is very rich, like other alluvial deposits. The actual coast itself is formed of very recent sandstone, full of sea-shells, of species now living in the adjacent sea, and occasionally showing a slightly raised beach, as if the shore had been recently slightly upheaved. The soil of Esdraelon and Gennesaret is chiefly a volcanic débris. No mines are worked in Palestine.

CHAPTER III.

METEOROLOGY OF PALESTINE.

THE climate of Palestine, as may be seen at once from the physical character and perpetually changing altitudes of the country, varies in every district. There is greater difference of climate to be found within a distance of fifty miles than between the north of Scotland and the southern coasts of England.

The greatest extremes of temperature are experienced in the southern deserts. On these elevated plateaux the thermometer frequently sinks in winter far below the freezing point, while during the day the heat exceeds the summer temperature of England. Thus I have registered the thermometer at Beersheba in February as low as 24° Fahr. at daybreak, the night mean for a week being 31°, while the mean at noon was 72°. The winds in winter, as they blow from the Arabian highlands, are keen and dry, but the power of the sun during the day completely counteracts their effects. After March, frost is rare in the desert, and during the summer the thermometer ranges to 90°, seldom falling below 65° at night.

The climate of Jerusalem, where frequent observations have been made and registers kept, may be taken as an approximate representation of that of the whole of Central Palestine, but very different from that of the maritime plains or of the Jordan valley. Jerusalem, although so elevated (2600 feet), enjoys a climate almost as mild as Gibraltar, with which it is in the same isothermal line, as also with California and Florida, though free from the extremes of temperature to which those countries are subject. January is the coldest month in the year at Jerusalem, the mean temperature being, according to one set of observations, 49° 4', and in another year 47° 7'. From January the temperature steadily increases, the mean being 53° 7' in 1844, 54° 4' in 1855, and 56' 4', according to our own observations. taken outside the Jaffa gate in 1864, for the month of

February. In May the temperature rapidly increases, from 61° 4' in April to 73° 8'. July is the hottest month, when the thermometric mean is 79°, but it does not fall rapidly till November, when it averages 63°, the mean for the year being, according to Dr. Barclay's observations during four years, 66° 5', and in the year 1844, by Mr. Glaisher, 62° 6'. During the coldest parts of the year, in December and February, we experienced no inconvenience from living outside the walls, with no other protection than a single tent.

In Nablous, the ancient Shechem, situated in a sheltered valley, the winter temperature is considerably higher than at Jerusalem, and in Nazareth is sensibly so, though in winter the latter place occasionally experiences quite as severe weather, but this is exceptional. The summer heats are also, in some degree, modified there by the cool breezes from the Lebanon. Thus, though the cold of Galilee and Samaria may be more severe in the day-time, yet the average of the nocturnal temperature is rather higher than on the more elevated hills about Jerusalem. At the same time, while it is very rarely that snow lies for more than an hour or two at Jerusalem, in Galilee it frequently remains two or three days before it entirely disappears.

Frost is very rare at Jerusalem. During the winter of 1863-4, the thermometer only three times touched the freezing point, and the lowest reading registered by us in February was 38. Snow fell but once in that year, on the 13th of January, for two or three hours, but melted as it fell. The tenderest plants rarely suffer there from frost, and the date palm flourishes, as well as other trees still more impatient of cold.

In the maritime plains the temperature is very much higher than in the highlands, and the crops are about a month in advance of those near Jerusaleim. Even so far north as Beyrout, the mean temperature for the year is given by Mr. Glaisher as 69° 3'. In Sharon, and the other low-lying coast plains, frost and snow are quite unknown, though higher up, near Acre, snow falls about once in ten years, and never remains. Insects are found throughout the winter, and supply food for the swallows which remain on the coast through the whole year. Snow must always have been rare in Central and Southern Palestine. Familiar as are the references to it

in the poetical and prophetical books of Scripture, suggested by its constant presence on Hermon and Lebanon, yet in the historical books it is only once mentioned: "Benaiah the son of Jehoiada . . . went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow" (2 Sam. xxiii. 20).

The rains on the coast are frequently heavy in winter, and I have felt Jafla and Ramleh bitterly cold during their continuance, with a westerly wind, yet the vegetation is almost tropical, and the climate is on the average milder than in any part of Europe, and though not so hot in autumn as the Algerian plains, is yet, on the whole, considerably warmer than in any part of the Barbary States. The orange groves of Jaffa are among the most luxuriant in the world, and the banana ripens there freely, which it does not ordinarily do on any other part of the Mediterranean coast north of Egypt.

Still more tropical is the climate of the Valley of the Jordan. On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which is 650 feet below the level of the sea, this change of temperature is unmistakably seen, the depression of the valley causing a sudden change from the climate and products of the Galilean hills around. The extraordinary heat and exuberant fertility of the Plain of Gennesaret were noticed by Josephus, and, though the gardens and palm groves have perished, the wild plants are still semi-tropical in character. The thermometer, at a height of 450 feet above the plain, exhibited from March 17 to April 5 a mean of 63° 2′ Fahr. on the twentyfour hours, and of 73° 1′ from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. In May the heat had so much increased, that from the 17th to the 25th of May, at an elevation of 200 feet above the lake, the thermometric mean of day and night was 77° 8', of day only 83° 4'.

As we descend the Valley of the Jordan, the climate steadily increases in temperature, till the maximum is reached on the shores of the Dead Sea. Here frost is unknown. So little is the severity of winter felt that, during the month of January, the lowest mean temperature of the night was 47° 8', and the mean temperature of the day 67°, the lowest point ever reached by the thermometer being on one occasion 42°. April, the thermometer registered 105° in the shade, and in the summer so intense is the heat, that even

In

the naked Arabs of the Safieh and of Engedi are com pelled by it to leave these recesses and to take refuge in the highlands.

It is needless to enter into particulars on the climate of the northern frontier, Hermon and Lebanon, which varies according to elevation, from the genial warmth of the lower valleys to the Alpine severity of the mountain tops, clothed with all but perpetual snows, and attaining a height of about 10,000 feet above the sea level.

To sum up shortly, while frost and snow are unknown in the Jordan valley, they are extremely rare, and never last for twenty-four hours in any part of the country south of the northern mountain range. Ice is only occasionally seen on stagnant pools in the hilly districts in the early morning, and the only Scriptural allusions to it are in the Book of Job and in the Psalms.

Rain falls most copiously in the Holy Land, but only at certain periods of the year; and there are few countries in which the probable weather can be reckoned on with greater certainty than in Syria. In the summer and autumn rain scarcely ever falls, and the sky is hardly shaded by a cloud. The clear, uninterrupted glare of the sun's rays scorches up every green thing, excepting the foliage of the trees, and gives the whole country the appearance of a stony desert. When the rains do fall, they are, for the most part, generally distributed within a day or two over the whole country from the Lebanon to Beersheba, though they fall most copiously on the coast and over the central hills, and in much less abundance in the Lower Jordan valley than elsewhere.

The climate is thus naturally divided, not into four seasons, as with us, but into two, summer and winter, which succeed each other with scarcely any intermediate gradations, the summer commencing with the harvest in April, and continuing until the former rain' in November. Scripture speaks in many passages of the early rain' or former rain,' i.e., the rains of autumn and winter, and the latter rain,' or showers of spring: “I will give you the rain of your land in his due season. the first rain and the latter rain" (Deut. xi. 14). "The Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season (Jer. v. 24). He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto