Unexplored Syria (Volume 1); Visits to the Libanus, the Tulul El Safa, the Anti-Libanus, the Northern Libanus, and the ?Alah (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1872. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... UNEXPLORED SYRIA. GENERAL REMARKS. My eyes were still full of the might and majesty of the Chilian Andes, and of the grace and grandeur of Magellan's Straits--memories which fashionable Vichy and foul Brindisi had strengthened, not effaced--as I landed upon the Syrian shore on Friday, October 1, 1869.1 The points of resemblance and of difference between the South Pacific coast and Mediterranean Palestine at once struck my glance. Both are disposed nearly upon a meridian; mere *strips of flat seaboard, mostly narrow, rarely widening, bounded by two parallel Cordilleras, flanking waterless deserts on the far eastern lee-land: the northernmost are notably the highest blocks of mountain; and the low-lying southern extremities, in Asia as in America, are ever rising by secular up-growth; whilst either shores, Pacific and Mediterranean, are subject to remarkable oscillations of level, chiefly the result of Plutonic agencies. Both coasts are subtended by currents with northerly sets; both lands depend greatly upon snow for their water-supply; both show the extremest contrasts of siccity and humidity, of luxuriance and barrenness; and both abut upon a 'desert, ' an extensive tract of extreme aridity. In both, as was said by a lover of Spain, God has still much land in His own holding. Syria and Palestine arc, indeed, an Eastern Chili dwarfed and grown old--whose wadys (Fiumaras) are measured by yards, not furlongs; whose precipices answer to feet, instead of metres; whose travelling distances are registered in hours, not in days and nights. The former boasts of its Hermon, its Libanus, and its AntiLibanus; the latter caps them with her Maypii, her Tupungato, and her Aconcagua--names which, by the bye, drew groans as I pronounced them at the last anniversary dinn..