Between Esdraelon and Bethel—the territory originally allotted to the sons of Joseph, forty miles in length—the mountain-ridge presents some pecu liar and striking features. The summits are more rounded and more rocky than those in Galilee ; and the sides, though in many places bare, are generally clothed with scraggy woods of dwarf oak, terebinth, and maple, or with shrubberies of thorn bushes. The fertile upland plains are still found here, though smaller than those in Galilee ; the largest is the plain of Mukhna, along the eastern base of Gerizim, measuring about six miles by one. The plains of Samar, Kubatiyeh, and Dothan, are much smaller. The hill-sides around them get steeper and wider towards the south. The valleys running into Sharon are long, winding, mostly tillable, though dry and bare ; while those on the east, running into the chasm of the Jordan, are deep and abrupt ; but being abundantly watered by numerous fountains, and being planted with olive groves and orchards, they have a rich and picturesque appearance (cf. Van de Velde, ii. 314). In fact, the eastern declivities of the mountains of Ephraim, wild and rugged though they are, contain some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the most luxuriant orchards in Central Palestine (Id., p. 335). Dr. Robinson writes of Telluzah, the ancient Tirzah (Cant. vi. 4), a few miles north of Nabulus, The town is sur rounded by immense groves of olive trees, planted on all the hills around ; mostly young and thrifty trees' (iii. 302) ; and of one of the great wadys east of it, Nowhere in Palestine, not even at Na bulus, had I seen such noble brooks of water' (Id., 303); and again of the whole district, This tract of the Faria, from el-Kurawa in the Ghor to the rounded hills which separate it from the plain of Sanfir, is justly regarded as one of the most fertile and valuable regions of Palestine' (p. 304, cf. 305 seq.) The features of the mountains are different from those of Galilee. Here there is more wild ness and ruggedness, the tracts of level ground are smaller, the valleys are narrower, and the banks steeper. While the rich upland plains produce abundant crops of grain, yet this is a region on the whole specially adapted for the cultivation of olives, orchards, and vineyards. The more carefully its features, soil, and products are examined, the more evident does it become that Ephraim was indeed blessed with the chief things of the ancient moun tains '—vines, figs, olives, and corn, all growing luxuriantly amid the lasting hills.' It was not in vain the dying patriarch deliberately rested his right hand on the head of Joseph's younger son, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim' (Gen. xlviii. 58-2o; cf, Stanley, S. and P., p. 226).
Passing southward from Samaria into Jucixa from the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh into that of Benjamin and Judah—both the physical features and the scenery of the range undergo a great change. The change does not take place rapidly, it is gradual. Immediately south of Shiloh the change begins. The little upland plains, which, with their green grass and green corn and smooth surface, so much relieve the monotony of the moun tain-tops, almost disappear in Benjamin, and in Judah they are unknown. Those which do exist in Benjamin, as the plains of Gibeon and Re phaim, are small and rocky. The soil alike on plain, hill, and glen, is poor and scanty ; and the gray limestone rock everywhere crops up over it, giving the landscape a barren and forbidding aspect. Natural wood disappears : and a few small bushes, brambles, or aromatic shrubs, alone ap pear upon the hill-sides. The hill-summits now
assume that singular form which prevails in Judah, and which Stanley has well described :—` Rounded hills, chiefly of a gray colour—gray partly from the limestone of which they are formed, partly from the tufts of gray shrub with which their sides are thinly clothed—their sides formed into con centric rings of rock, which must have served in ancient times as supports to the terraces, of which there are still traces to the very summits ; valleys, or rather the meetings of those gray slopes with the beds of dry water-courses at their feet—long sheets of bare rock laid like flagstones, side by side, along the soil—these are the chief features of the greater part of the scenery of the historical parts of Palestine. These rounded hills, occasionallystretch ing into long undulating ranges, are for the most part bare of wood. Forest and large timber are not known. Corn-fields and—in the neighbourhood of Christian populations as at Bethlehem—vineyards creep along the ancient terraces. In the spring the hills and valleys are covered with thin grass, and the aromatic shrubs which clothe more or less almost the whole of Syria and Arabia. But they also glow with what is peculiar to Palestine, a pro fusion of wild flowers, daisies, the white flower called the star of Bethlehem, but especially with a blaze of scarlet flowers of all kinds, chiefly ane mones, wild tulips, and poppies. Of all the aspects of the country this blaze of scarlet colour is perhaps the most peculiar' (S. and P., 136, seq.) Fountains are rare, and their supplies of water scanty and precarious among the mountains of Benjamin and Judah. Wells take their place, bored deeply into the white soft limestone rock ; covered cisterns, into which the rainwater is guided, are also very numerous, and large open tanks. The glens which descend westward are long and winding, with dry rocky beds, and banks breaking down to them in terraced declivities. The lower slopes near the plain of Philistia are neither so bare nor so rugged as those nearer the crest of the ridge. Dwarf trees and extensive shrubberies, and aromatic plants, partially cover them ; while little groves of olives, and orchards of figs and pomegranates, appear around most of the villages. The valleys, too, become wider, sometimes expand ing, as Surar, es-Sumpt (Elah), and Beit Jibrin, into rich and beautiful corn-fields. The eastern declivities of the ridge, so fertile and picturesque in Samaria, are here a wilderness—bare, white, and absolutely desolate ; without trees, or grass, or stream, or fountain. Naked slopes of white gravel and white rock descend rapidly and irregu larly from the brow of the ridge, till at length they dip in the frowning precipices of Quarantania, Feshkah, Engedi, and Masada, into the Jordan Valley or Dead Sea. Naked ravines, too, like huge fissures, with perpendicular walls of rock, often several hundred feet in height, furrow these slopes from top to bottom. The wild and savage grandeur of Wadys Farah, el-Kelt, en-Nar, and Khureitan, is almost appalling. This region is the wilderness of yucicea. It extends from the parallel of Bethel on the north, to the southern border of Palestine. Its length is about forty miles, and its breadth averages nine. It has always been a wil derness, and it must always continue so (Judg. i. 16 ; Matt. iii. Il—the home of the wandering shepherd (I Sam. xvii. 28), and the prowling bandit (Luke x. 3o). It is the only part of Pales tine to which that name can be properly applied (see jUDIEA, and JUDAH).