Robert Stopford, in later times. It is thus the one city of Palestine which has acquired distinct relations with the Western world of modern history, analogous to those of Cæsarea with the Western world of ancient history. But the singular fate which it enjoyed at the close of the Crusades gives it a special interest never to be forgotten by those who in the short space of an hour's walk can pass round its broken walls. Within that narrow circuit-between the Saracen armies on one side, and the roar of the Mediterranean Sea on the other -were cooped up the remnant of the Crusading armies, after they had been driven from every other part of Palestine. Within that circuit "the kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, of the house of Lusignan; the princes of Antioch; the counts of Tripoli and Sidon; the great masters of the Hospital, the Temple, and the Teutonic Orders; the Republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa; the Pope's legate; the kings of France and England, assumed an independent command. Seventeen tribunals exercised the power of life and death'." All the eyes of Europe were then fixed on that spot. Acre contained in itself a complete miniature of feudal Europe and Latin Christendom.

PLAIN OF

IV. With the northern extremity of the plain of Acre, the coast of the Holy Land is naturally terminated by PHOENICIA. the promontories of the Tyrian Ladder (Râs enNâkûra) and the White Cape (Râs el-Abyad); the first deriving its name from the fact that it was the entrance into the Phoenician territory, the latter from its white rocks'.

But though thus separated both historically and geographi cally from Palestine, the plain of Phoenicia in all essential features furnishes so natural a continuation of the maritime plain of Judea and Samaria, that it will be best considered here. The double tract-of sand along the shore, of cultivated land under the hills, still continues. The towns, too, resemble in their situation all those which we have hitherto noticed along the coast: standing out on rocky promontories, with small harbours, natural or artificial. If there were any difference to be observed which might in any degree account for the far greater celebrity obtained by these cities in

very

1 Gibbon, vii. 442.

2 Probably both these promontories

are comprised under the name of "Scala Tyriorum."

commerce and navigation, it would be that the promontories of Tyre, Sidon, and Beirût project further, and thus form something more of a protection, or of a sea-girt situation, than those of Ascalon, Jaffa, Dor, or Acre. Perhaps, also, the groves and gardens which surround the ports from which these promontories start, are, especially at Beirût and Sidon, more extensive and luxuriant even than those at Jaffa. This long line of coast, then, from the White Cape far up to Arvad-a length equal to that of the whole of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba is the famous country, second only to Palestine itself in its effect on the ancient world, called by the Hebrews, partly perhaps in allusion to its level plain, "Canaan," or "the Lowland," the more remarkable for its situation under the highlands of Lebanon; called by the Greeks PHOENICIA, or the "Land of Palms," from the palm-groves which appear indeed at intervals all along the western coast, but here more than elsewhere'.

nection with Pales

tine.

So completely was the line of demarcation observed, which the Tyrian promontories interposed between Phoenicia Slightness and Palestine, that their histories hardly touch. of its conTheir relations were always peaceful: Solomon traded with Hiram; Ahab married the daughter of Ethbaal'; but the incessant wars, which brought the Assyrians from the north, and the Philistines from the south, into the heart of Judæa, never produced any contact with the great commercial states of this secluded tract, Not till the very last days of the Jewish monarchy do we find any invasion of Jewish territory by the Phoenician kings. Jaffa and Dor, with their rich tract of adjacent corn-land, were then wrenched from the tribe of Dan and added to the Sidonian territory, and from that time the southern boundary of Phoenicia was extended indefinitely along the coast to one or both of those two cities.

Two exceptions, proving the rule, introduce higher visions into this primeval region of commerce and of letters. Overlooking the shore, whence Grecian fable imagined that Europa had taken flight; seated aloft on the top and side of one of

The palm was the emblem of Tyre, Sidon, and Arvad. (See Kenrick's Phoe nicia, p. 35.)

1 Kings xvi. 31. 3 See Note C.

the hills, the long line of which skirts the plain of Phoenicia ; Elijah at conspicuous from far by the white domes of its many Sarepta. tombs of Mussulman saints, is the modern village of Surafend, the ancient Zarephath. Over those hills, in the great famine which fell alike on both Palestine and Phoenicia, came the great Israelite Prophet into the territory of the heathen Tyrians, and partook of the hospitality of the widowed mother. A curious distortion of the story still lingers in the Mussulman traditions of the neighbourhood. Close on the sea-shore stands one of these sepulchral chapels dedicated to "El-Khudr," the Mohamedan representative of Elijah. There is no tomb inside, only hangings before a recess. This variation from the usual type of Mussulman sepulchres is "because El-Khudr, is not yet dead; he flies round and round the world, and those chapels are built wherever he has appeared. Every Thursday night and Friday morning there is a light so strong within the chapel that none can enter'."

Christ at

Long afterwards, another Syro-Phoenician woman welcomed the approach of a greater Prophet in the same neighbourhood. We know not the spot. Mediæval tradition points to the ancient reservoir south of Tyre, called "the head. Tyre. of the spring"-" Râs el-Ain." He rested, it was said, on a large rock, and sent Peter and John to bring him some water thence, which he drank, and blessed the beautiful spot whence it came'. At any rate somewhere within the Tyrian border the Lord's feet trod on Gentile ground, so far as we know, for the first and only time, since Joseph "took the young child" back from Egypt. And onwards He went "through Sidon"," and crossed the high Lebanon range on His return to his usual haunts.

But the very rarity of this intercourse with Palestine may justify a few words on the connection which bound so closely together the plain of Phoenicia and the fortunes of its own inhabitants. First, its sea-board, with such little harbours as its headlands furnish, naturally made it

Harbours.

1 So we were told by the peasants on the spot. For the legend of El-Khudr, see Jelal-ed-din, 128; Schwarz, 129, 446.

2 Maundeville (Early Travellers, pp.

141, 142), Phocas (Acta Sanctorum, Maii, vol. ii.)

3 dia Zid@vos in B. and D. (Mark vii. 31).

the earliest outlet of Asiatic enterprise. From this coast' the inhabitants of that old continent must have made their discoveries; and for the first beginnings of such voyages, as in the analogous case of Greece, the smallness of the ports was not a sufficient objection. No one who has seen Munychia and Phalerum need be surprised at the narrow space of the havens of Tyre and Sidon. Secondly, there was the protection of the vast range of Lebanon. This at once gave to the northern coast of Phoenicia a security which the southern coast of Philistia has never enjoyed. The Bedouin tribes, no doubt, occasionally cross the Tyrian Ladder or the Galilean hills into Phoenicia, but their incursions must be very rare compared with those to which Philistia has been subject, in early times from the mountaineers of Judæa, in later times

Security.

from the Arabs of the Sinaitic Desert. Thirdly, the Rivers.

ranges of Lebanon send across the narrow strip of Phoenicia streams of a size and depth wholly unknown to Palestine. The Leontes, as we have seen, one of the four rivers of the Lebanon, though not equal in its effect on the country which it waters to the other three, is yet the largest river in Syria, the largest river which the traveller from Egypt will have seen since he left the Nile. And the more northern rivers, the "pleasant Bostrenus "-the modern Auwaly, hard by Sidon: the clear Lycus-River of the Wolf or Dog; the romantic rivers of the Adonis and Kadisha-are amongst "the streams from 'Lebanon," which must always have kept Phoenicia fresh and fertile.

If from the country generally we turn to its more celebrated cities, there are several marked characteristics which belong to all of them, and which distinguish them from the cities of the southern plain. First, though none of them possess harbours in the modern sense of the word, they have all certain approximations to it. Tyre and Arvad stood on islands; and Sidon, Berytus (Beirût), and Tripolis (Tarabulus) on promontories, with a chain of islets in front or at their side. These islands served

1 A likeness to it is found in a huge fragment of ruin at the river's mouth. (Ritter, iv. 510.)

2

Kadisha," the "Holy Stream." See Chapter XII.

3 Cant. iv. 15.

Sidon.

in ancient times, and might to a still greater degree serve in Tyre and modern times, for a protection from the storms of the Mediterranean. The modern town has very much shrunk within its ancient limits. Not only has the town on the mainland disappeared, but a large part of the island—that is, what was the island before Alexander joined it to the shore by the present long sandy isthmus--lies bare and uninhabited; fragments of columns tangled together in the waves; large fragments, too, of masonry of the walls of the old port; huge walls of an ancient castle, and also of the old cathedral'. In this last lie, far away from Hohenstauffen or Salzburg, the bones of the great Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, brought thither after the long funeral procession which passed down the coast from Tarsus to Tyre, to lay his remains beside the dust of a yet greater man-Origen. On this rugged rock (tsur) the earliest sanctuary of Tyre, as of her own colony of Gades, was reared; Name of and from it was derived the name of Tyre, or, according to its ancient Hebrew and modern Arabic name, Tsur, and Sur-which, in all probability, led the Greeks to transfer the appellation of this, their first acquaintance, to the whole land of SYRIA. It is possible that the junction of the island of Tyre to the mainland, effected by Alexander's mole, suggested to him the formation of the double harbour of Alexandria, by uniting to the mainland the island of Pharos. It is said that the junction of the island of Ruad, or Arvad, to the mainland by like means, would render that ancient seaport the most available harbour in Syria.

Syria.

Secondly, Beirût, Tripoli, and especially Tyre and Sidon, enjoy the advantage of peculiarly fertile tracts immediately adjoining. The gardens of Sidon are conspicuous even from a distance. The plain of Tyre, with the copious springs of Ras el ain, has always been famous as one of the richest districts of the Turkish Empire.

Thirdly, there were attached to some of them special natural productions of value. The purple shell-fish, on their rocky The purple promontories,―said still to be found at Tantùrah,— Shell-fish. furnished the Phoenician merchants one of their chief articles of trade. Sidon derives its name from the con

For the topography of ancient Tyre, see Ritter, Lebanon, pp. 324-336.