this day, is nearly two miles more than the straight one across the plain, and is therefore little frequented.”1

Captains Irby and Mangles, after having rested, during night, at the village of Lourdie, situated immediately by the side of the highest pinnacle of Mount Casius, without ascending it, descended the north side of the mountains, through woody and wild scenery; and after having lost their way several times, reached "the banks of the Orontes, at the place where commences the picturesque part of the river, and immediately below the spot where the chart was marked, the site of the city and groves of Daphne. We began now to follow the banks of the river, and were astonished at the beauty of the scenery, far surpassing any thing we expected to see in Syria, and indeed any thing we had witnessed in Switzerland, though we walked nine hundred miles in that country, and saw most of its beauty. The river, from the time we began to trace its banks, ran continually between the high hills, winding and turning incessantly; at times the road led over precipices in the rocks, looking down perpendicularly on the river. The luxuriant variety of foliage was prodigious; and the rich green myrtle, which was very plentiful, contrasted with the colour of the road, the soil of which was a dark red granite, made us imagine we were riding through pleasure-grounds. The laurel, lauristinus, baytree, fig-tree, wild vine, plane-tree, English sycamore, arbutus, both common and andrachne, dwarf oak, &c., were scattered in all directions. At times the road was overhung with rocks, covered with ivy; the mouths of caverns also presented themselves, and gave a wildness to the scene; and the perpendicular cliffs jutted into the river upwards of three hundred feet high, forming cor

'Travels in Palestine and Syria, vol. ii. pp. 294, 298.

ners round which the waters ran in a most romantic manner; and on one occasion the road wound round a deep bay thus, so that on perceiving ourselves immediately opposite the spot we had so recently passed, it appeared that we had crossed the river. We descended at times into plains cultivated with mulberry plantations, and vines, and prettily studded with picturesque cottages. The occasional shallows of the river, keeping up a perpetual roaring, completed the beauty of the delightful scene, which lasted about two hours, when we entered into the plain of the Suadrach, where the river becomes of greater breadth, and runs to the sea, in as straight a line as a canal."1

The patience of the reader may have been tried in passing through the dry details of names and mere localities, as if the whole scene, destitute of all attraction, possessed no other interest, and were bleak as the bare pinnacle of Casius. But his perseverance may be rewarded by the enchanting scene which thus bursts upon his view, on being introduced to the entrance into Hamath. It is not, however, with its beauty that we have here to do, when a rigid scrutiny and strict search as to the reality of its claim, as adduced for the first time, have alone to be regarded. But these simple, and hitherto unapplied facts, may conspire, with still farther proof, to make the entrance into Hamath patent to the world.

Nothing but a hill country, without any such entrance into Hamath, is to be seen along the whole of the eastern side of the great plain, till that plain, which lies over against the land of Hamath, or great valley of the Orontes, is past, and Mount Casius is ascended. But immediately from it, as from the lower hills around, the

country appears like a plain all the way to Antioch. The Orontes at last, after a course of nearly two hundred miles from south to north, almost parallel to the coast, is turned by another mountain chain, winds its way between a double line of high hills, and then, straight as a canal, enters by a direct line into the Mediterranean sea, a fine, deep, and steady flowing stream, without any obstruction to turn it aside when it had reached the junction of the west and north borders of Israel.

While it is thus manifest, that there is in this precise point an entrance into Hamath, the nature of it, as well as the situation it occupies, may add another feature by which it may be recognised.

Cellarius, who earnestly strives to assimilate the borders of the promised land with those of ancient Israel, states, without adducing any illustration, or specifying any locality, that the manner in which the border of Palestine, as he denominates it, is spoken of as the entrance into Hamath, denotes "a province to be entered through straits or narrow passes"-per fauces et angustias adeundam. Plain as is the meaning of these words, it may be more obvious to some readers, by a mere reference to the common Latin dictionary,"fauces, straits, or narrow passages, the mouth of a river." Such, precisely, is the actual scene. A mountain pass, where, for several miles, the opposite hills almost meet, forms, near to the mouth of a river, the entrance into Hamath; while, notwithstanding, from the high mountain from which it is pointed out, and is seen to form a well-defined valley, it appears, however narrowed in some places by low hills, like a plain all the way to Antioch, or for the distance of sixteen miles, till extensive plains spread out in the land of Hamath.

1 Cellar. tom. ii. p. 281.

Traversing covenanted, and therefore Israelitish ground, we first passed along the shore, till the land bordered with the mouth of the Orontes; and, again, in the interior, with a hill country between, to Antioch. And from more abundant proof that may still farther be supplied, the reader may judge whether, in the space that intervenes between these two places, the Scriptural entrance into Hamath may not be seen, as plainly as was the road-which lay there the whole way-between Antioch and its port.

But while the Phoenician coast has to be followed till the designated mountain be reached, and very much land has to be passed beyond the ancient frontier of Israel, so that all the appointed territories may be included within the borders, yet it is not from the shore, but from the sea, that the very high mountain was to be pointed out, from which the entrance into Hamath is seen. It is, therefore, necessary to add the testimony of the navigator to that of the traveller.

Sailing northward from Arvad, the ancient capital of the Arvadites, as Captains Irby and Mangles advanced in the same direction along the shore, another witness, on passing Latakia (or Laodicea), thus points to Mount Casius. "The scenery soon after became very fine. Mount Casius rose out of the sea with stupendous grandeur, raising its craggy sides and lofty peak of naked rock into the sky; the woody precipices along the coast seemed to drop into the sea. Their forms were cast in the most magnificent mould, much finer than the heights of Lebanon. Mount Casius is from every point a sublime feature, but the most beautiful point is the gorge in the mountains, through which the Orontes finds its way to the plain and sea; there is a loneliness in the folding forms of the mountains, a solitude, a wildness, which makes one long to trace the romantic course of

this river," to see, it might have been said, the entrance into Hamath.

"The entrance by the mouth of the Orontes," as it is literally called, "possesses a grandeur rarely equalled by this beautiful country. Mount Casius rises abruptly from the sea; its summit is a bold rocky pinnacle."

But other witnesses are not wanting to raise their voice at last from that once frequented but long deserted shore. As if the very first fruits of the Euphrates expedition had been destined to be an offering to the cause of Scriptural illustration, by the concurring solution of another problem, than that of the practicability of the navigation of the Euphrates, Colonel Chesney, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, commences an admirable article on the Bay of Antioch, by a description of the scene, as the expedition bore down upon the coast of Syria, in order that they might disembark at the very point which formed of old the port of Antioch. In preference to all other places he sought an entrance there, whereby to go to Beer on the Euphrates.

"The Bay of Antioch is spacious, free from rocks, and well sheltered on every side, with the exception of the south-east, where, in the distant horizon, is seen the lofty island of Cyprus; the anchorage, however, is good, and the water deep, almost to the very beach. This was the spot selected, in order to avoid the Beilan mountains, for the disembarkation of the party destined to proceed on the expedition to the Euphrates. On the 3d April 1835, H.M.S. Columbine, followed by the George Canning, under all sail, led the way from the offing towards the anchorage. To the south, as we proceeded, was the lofty Jebel El Akrab [Mount Casius] rising ' Fisher's Views of Syria. Descriptions by J. Carne, Esq., of Cambridge, vol. ii. pp. 28, 29. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 77.