1.  The  Land. — Palestine  is  a  very  different  land  from  either
Egypt  or  Mesopotamia.  They  are  made  by  the  irrigation  of
rivers.  Palestine  is  fertilized  by  rain  from  heaven.  In  them
the  scenery  is  monotonous;  they  are  river  valleys  each  of  which
was  once  in  part  an  arm  of  the  sea,  but  now  filled  up  by  the  gradual
deposit  of  mud.  Palestine  was  formed  in  one  of  the  greatest  geo-
logical upheavals  the  earth  ever  experienced.  This  was  nothing
less  than  a  great  rift  in  the  earth's  crust  extending  from  the  Lebanon
mountains  to  the  Indian  Ocean.  The  strata  on  the  west  side  of  this
rift  slipped  downward  past  those  on  its  east  side  for  a  mile  or  more.
Those  on  the  west  were  bent  at  diffeil^nt  points  in  this  long  course
in  different  ways,  but  the  result  of  the  rift  itself  was  to  form  the
Jordan  valley  and  the  bed  of  the  Dead  Sea,  the  valley  which  nms
from  the  Dead  Sea  to  the  Gulf  of  Akaba,  and  that  deep  rift  be-
tween Asia  and  Africa  which  forms  the  Red  Sea  itself..
In  Palestine  the  strata  on  the  west  of  this  rift  bent  up  into-  two
parallel  ridges,  to  the  west  of  which  a  narrow  plain  of  varying
width,  ancient  Philistia,  rises  from  the  sea.  To  the  east  of  this
rift  the  land  remained  at  approximately  its  old  level.  The  various
ridges  of  the  country  are,  on  account  of  the  birth-pangs  of  their
origin,  intersected  with  valleys  innumerable,  so  that  in  no  country
of  tJie  world  can  such  variety  of  scenery  and  climate  be  found  within
such  narrow  limits.
