Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/24

4 HISTORY OK ART IN* PIKKNKMA AND ITS I)KI'I:N - DI:NCIKS. A great future was thus assured to any tribes who should people the region we still call by its ancient name of Syria. That region is bounded on the west by the sea, on the south by the isthmus that separates, or rather joins, Asia and Africa, on the west by the desert of Arabia and the Euphrates, on the north by the southern slopes of Amanus and Taurus. On three sides Syria was bounded respectively by the sea, by chains of mountains and by vast stretches of barren sand, so that the industrious communities who occupied it could only be attacked from a few points ; from the south, where there was no natural barrier, by the wide passes ol the north-east, and by those narrow defiles in the north-west called the Cilician gates. In the interior of the country, strong fortresses capable of offering a long and stubborn resistance to the invader could be erected on several sites which complacent nature had provided, and as a last resource the tribes could take to their ships and retreat either to the small islets that stud the coasr, or to the large islands in the west, one of which, Cyprus, could be descried on a clear day from the heights on the Syrian shore. The teeming waters which bathed the long line of coast must soon have excited in those who dwelt there the wish to risk themselves upon the sea and to hoist their sails to the breeze. A large part of the country could only be inhabited by a sea- faring population I mean the part squeezed in between the sea and the slopes of the Lebanon. Elsewhere one encounters spacious plains like the fertile fickaa, or Coulo- Syria, like the wondrous garden that hides Damascus in its waving verdure, like the plains of Esdraelon and the country of the Philistines. But from Mount Carmel to the Cape of Tripoli the summits rise to a height of some 3,000 feet, so close to the sea shore that no room is left for agriculture, and the two great rivers that are nourished by the springs and snows of the Lebanon, the Orontes and the Jordan, flow north and south ; the rivers that flow to the coast are no more than mountain torrents. The most important of them all, that which falls into the sea between Tyre and Sidon, the Nahr-cl-Litani, was called by the Greeks the Lcontcs, or " river of the lion." The NaJir-cl-Kclb, or " river of the dog, ' joins the sea north of the roads of Beyrout. Both of these are brawling torrents and thoroughly deserve their names (see Fig. i). Between the sea and the great buttresses of the Lebanon there is seldom room for more than a narrow be-ich, a long ribbon of