CONCLUSION. FROM the previous details, a few concluding words may suffice for a succinct delineation of Syria, or the promised land of Israel, which may but be given in the words of Volney. "It was reserved for him," says Malte Brun, one of the first authorities in geography, "to present the world with a complete picture of Syria." So complete was that picture -inferior, in the variety of its discriminating features, to none but that which was drawn by the prophets of oldthat, as we have elsewhere shown, he has supplied many most precise and literal illustrations of the prophecies which have gone forth against it. But in his day the land had not fully reached its last prophetic degree of desolation and depopulation. The population, rated by Volney at two millions and a half, is now estimated at half that amount. The soil in the plain of Syria " is rich and loamy, and indicates the greatest fecundity. In the territory of Aleppo it resembles very fine brick-dust. Almost everywhere else the earth is brown, and as fine as garden mould." The difference of latitude between the different extremities of Syria-equal to that from Cornwall to Caithnessgives rise of itself to variety of temperature; but other nat ural causes far more powerfully tend, even in continuous lo. calities, to diversify the climate in a very remarkable, if not unparalleled degree. The palms in the deep valley of the Jordan flourished in the greatest luxuriance in a tropical climate, while the magnificent cedars of Lebanon show how goodly is the produce of the land in its highest elevations, and in the vicinity of eternal snow. Along the coast of Syria, and at Tripoli in particular, according to Volney, "the lowest to which the thermometer falls in winter is eight or nine degrees above the freezing point (40 or 41° of Fahrenheit). In winter, therefore, all the chain of mountains is covered with snow, while the lower country is always freed from it, or, at least, it lies a very short time. In the lower plains, the winter is so mild along the seacoast that the orange, palm, banana, and other deli * Volney's Travels, chap. xxi., § 6. |