The Association of History and Geography (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE HOLY LAND (part I) The arbitrary character of the land divisions we call continents can be seen by considering Arabia. In its geographical grouping it is classed with the countries of Asia, yet in its surface characteristics it is but an extension of the great desert of Northern Africa. Just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, made at the expense of the Libyan Desert, so Palestine or the Holy Land is the gift of the mountains and the sea, made at the expense of the Arabian Desert, for the hills which run parallel to the Levant coast intercept the moisture which is carried by winds from the " Great Sea." Between Egypt and Palestine is a district which is a striking contrast to both. It is the Sinaitic Peninsula, the cradle and the birthplace of the Israelitish nation. The Israelites left Egypt a horde of slaves. They issued from the peninsula of Sinai, fused and welded into a coherent whole. The prevailing characteristic of the latter region is its impressive monotony. At certain seasons of the year, a thin veil of green is spread over portions of the soil where' a few wells of brackish water can be found. Elsewhere is a wilderness of bare rocks, cut up by wadies of sterile sand, gravel, and marl, monotonous, apparently unchangeable. In the south of the peninsula is a chaos of mountain peaks, where tempests of frightful violence often rage. Lightning leaps from crag to crag, while the peals of thunder shake the earth. These were the impressive scenes amid which the Israelites were assembled to receive the Law, whose dominant note was: " Thou shalt not ." By journeying along the two sides of the Sinaitictriangle the Israelites approached the Land of Promise on the east of the Jordan, but the ordinary route from Egypt to the Holy Land lay along the coast, and this w...