Carmel, then at Athlit two miles again, and twenty miles at Ascalon, south of which point it is narrowed again by the foothills of the Judæan plateau. In its northern portion this geographical feature is known historically as the Plain of Sharon, in the south it is the Plain of the Philistines, and north of the Bay of Acre, though the promontory of Ras en Nakura breaks its continuity, it is in all essentials continued into the Plain of Phoenicia. But both south and north it is largely cut off from direct and easy access to the sea by a belt of sand-dunes of varying depth and height, but rising often to 250 feet, lying parallel to and only a few yards from the beach. This belt fringes the coast from just south of Tyre to Sheikh Zewaiid, about which point it merges into the sand dunes of Sinai, and amply explains the absence of decent harbours in Southern Syria, and the insignificance of the sea and of maritime influences in Jewish history. Jaffa, it is true, had in Solomon's time a good harbour, now entirely filled up and covered with fields and orange groves. But even Jaffa was probably a Phoenician settlement, conquered by the Philistines, and it was King Hiram's Phœnician seamen who brought down to Jaffa the rafts of timber-fir, cypress, and cedar-from their northern harbours. The wadis which breach the sand-dunes mostly cross the plain from south-east to northwest, turning due westward for the last mile or so of their course through the sandhills. Such are the Wadi Ghuzze, the Wadi el Hesi, the Nahr Sukereir, the Nahr Rubin, and also a tributary of the Nahr el Auja, the Nahr el Burideh. The coastal plain has good and fertile soil, which, without much irrigation, yields eight to twelve-fold. In the south, round Gaza, the principal crops are barley and beans; the trees figs and olives, the characteristic Mediterranean vegetation. The plain is crossed, as already mentioned, and the sand-dune belt breached by a series of wadis, of which a few only, including the Mukatta (Kishon), and, in the south, notably, the Nahr Rubin, into which drains the Wadi es Surar, carry water except in winter. The greatest of these dry wadis is south of Gaza, the Wadi Ghuzze, four hundred yards wide near its mouth, and with banks rising in places to fifty feet in height. It drains an area reaching south beyond Khalasa, east beyond Beersheba, and north-east to Hebron, and when in winter flood may be impassable for two or three days. On its banks Abraham at Gerar (Um Jerrar) pastured his flocks. But the Philistine plain is agricultural and fruit-bearing rather than pastoral. The heavy night dews of summer and autumn water the summer crops; then with the beginning of the rainy season come the "former rains" about the middle or end of November, and ploughing begins. The "latter rains" come in March and April. The mean annual rainfall at Jerusalem is 26.05 inches; the mean temperature 64° Fahrenheit. The west wind is the rain-bringing wind, and blows on an average fifty to sixty days in the year. The north wind is cold; and the south wind, blowing across the Arabian deserts, very hot. It is the Khamsin, so called from the Arabic word for "fifty," for it is popularly supposed to blow fifty days in the year. North and north-west winds are, at Jerusalem, the prevailing winds, averaging over one hundred days. The east wind is dry, as it also reaches Palestine across desert. In the Stone Age, perhaps about 3000 B.C., Southern Palestine was inhabited by a race, or races, of cave-dwellers. Some of their dwellings have been excavated for the Palestine Exploration Fund by Professor Macalister at Gezer (Tel Jizar), near the railway line from Ramleh to Jerusalem. Others lived in natural or artificial caves on a group of hills on the plateau of Judæa, circled on the west by the valley of Hinnon, and on the east by the valley of the Kidron, which became in time the city of Jerusalem. These people were of small stature, and burned their dead.1 Southward of these puny cave-dwellers, holding the land from Hebron to Ashdod, spread a tall race, who seemed giants to the Israelite spies, the Nephilim (Numbers xiii, 33; Gen. vi. 1-4), Anakim or Rephaim, with whom should probably be connected the remarkable caves, hewn out of the soft limestone of the district, found especially at Beit Jibrin, about the centre of their territory, and two of the few dolmens found in Palestine, west of Jordan and south of Galilee. These Rephaim were not dispossessed when, about 2500-2000 B.C., the first Semitic invaders of Palestine began to enter from the east or south, and with their bronze weapons overcame the less powerful Gezerites to the north. On the contrary, they held their own till perhaps about 1200 B.C., when, just about the time that the Achæan chiefs set out against Troy, three important tribes, the Kenites, Judah, and Ephraim, with a number of subordinate septs, crossed Jordan under their leader Joshua, as part of a second great wave of Semitic invasion. Some, at any rate, of these Israelites or Hebrews, as they called themselves, had come from Egypt, wandering, as the Bedawin tribes do to-day, across the Sinai Peninsula, exhausting the supplies of each oasis they came to in turn, and living on the spring and autumn flocks of migrating quails and "manna" from the desert tamarisk. Part of the invaders turned northward; part-the Kenites, Judah, and Simeon-turned south, drove the Rephaim from Hebron (Joshua xi. 21), and settled there. A remnant of the Rephaim, however, seems to have been left in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod, holding the fertile coastal plain; nor could the newcomers possess themselves of the Jehusite twin fortresses of Jerusalem, on the two hills, the western now called Mount Sion, and the eastern, on which later stood the Jewish Temple, and where stands to-day the Moslem "Dome of the Rock," separated then from each other by the deep Tyropœon Valley. The importance of the capture of Jerusalem by David, about 1048 BC., was precisely that it made possible the union under him of the northern division of the Hebrew kingdom, which had adhered to Saul, with the southern division already under his own control. Up till then the unconquered Jebusite hill-fortress had made such union impossible.

4

Meantime, while the Hebrew tribes were in this first state of 1 Watson, Jerusalem, p. 10.

disunion and disorganisation in the new territory they meant to settle, another important event was happening in the Eastern Mediterranean. The great Cretan sea-empire received its death blow, perhaps from Achæan invasion from the north, and its peoples were scattered throughout the Ægean and neighbouring waters. Of these some began piratical enterprises upon the coasts of Egypt, and in the reign of Ramesis III. the "Peoples of Sea" combined for a land and sea raid on a grand scale on the Delta. It failed and was beaten back; and the baffled raiders, of whom the chief mentioned on the Egyptian monuments are called the Purasati," forced to turn aside, settled themselves first on the northern coastline of Palestine, and then, as the power of Egypt weakened, began to spread southward along the coastal plain. There they formed the confederacy of Philistine cities (Gaza, Ascalon, Gath, Ashdod, Ekron) that became one of the chief rivals and oppressors of the disunited Hebrew tribes. Not content with holding the fertile coastal plain from, at least, Dor, south of Carmel, to Gaza, they evidently mastered also the plain of Esdraelon, the great route between the East, Damascus and Mesopotamia and Egypt, and held Bethshan, close to the Jordan. Against them at first, the Hebrews, armed only with bronze against iron weapons, could make no head; though they carried on guerilla warfare in the wadis between the plateau and the plain. But gradually, under Samuel, Saul, and David, the nation won to strength and unity, and after three sharp conflicts with David, himself perhaps at first a Philistine vassal, their power was broken for good, and they gradually became merged in their Semitic surroundings, though their language still lingered on at Ashdod as late as the time of Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 24).

Even at its height, it is worth noting, the Philistine power centred in a curiously small area. Four of their five great cities, Ekron (Akir), Ashdod (Esdud), Ascalon (Askalan), and Gath (Tell es Safi), are enclosed in a tract of plain 18 miles long from north to south and 14 miles across. Gaza, it is true, is 12 miles farther south. It is curious also for a once seafaring folk that of all their cities Ascalon only was on the coast, where remains of its old walls still stand on the sea cliff. Ashdod and Gaza were on the north and south route along the side of the sandhills; Ekron, where the Wadi es Surar reaches the plain; Gath in wooded country on the slopes of the Judæan hills, and on a road from the north to Beit Jibrin. Again, the whole plain from Ascalon northwards is traversed by ridges with commanding peaks. It is noteworthy that in no case did a Philistine city take the highest of those of its neighbourhood for its site. Not two miles away from Ekron (Akir), for instance, is a more commanding ridge, where is situated the village of El Mughar (236 feet). This certainly suggests that, in spite of the storied prowess of their Israelite rivals in the hills, advantages of trade and cultivation, rather than need of protection, were guiding factors in the choice of site of the Philistine cities. In this respect the villages of the plain to-day still show a marked contrast to those of the Judæan hills. Unfortunately, these ridges and heights on the plain, with their almost bowling-green approaches for several thousand yards, and their cactus-hedged gardens-more formidable than barbed wire-have often proved themselves in twentieth-century warfare all too admirable rearguard positions for the Turk in his retreat.

The territory of the Israelites, too, was a small one. From Dan to Beersheba is only 180 miles; from Jordan to the sea is rarely more than 50 miles; and it must be remembered that for a long period of their history the Jews did not hold the coastal plain. Under David and his son and successor the Hebrew monarchy reached its zenith. On the north it perhaps was owned as overlord as far as the Euphrates; on the south it controlled the Bedawin tribes of the desert as far as the Wadi el Arish, "the river of Egypt," and the more settled population at the mouth of the wadi. Solomon, however, seems to have forgotten, as David never forgot, to hold the balance between the two halves of his dominions. He neglected the other tribes to enrich Benjamin and Judah, amongst whom his capital was situated; and as a result, on his death the disruptive tendencies of north and south, and the jealousy between Ephraim and Judah prevailed, and his empire split into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, generally at strife one with another, and both in consequence the ready prey of the great empires growing up on their borders. First, Rehoboam of Judah had in 970 to buy off Shishak, Pharaoh of Egypt. Then Assyria, instead of Egypt, became the enemy, and Shalmanezer in 721 captured Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, and transplanted its population, while Judah was left only partly independent. It was probably as a vassal of Assyria that in 608 Josiah attacked Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo in the Esdraelon plain. On his defeat there and his death his kingdom exchanged Assyrian suzerainty for the overlordship of Egypt, only to be brought back under Assyria eight years later by Nebuchadnezzar. Then last, on Zedekiah's attempt in 586 to throw off the Assyrian yoke by Egyptian aid, Jerusalem was besieged by Assyria and captured, and the city was destroyed.

TRAVEL MEMORIES.1

By Lieut.-Colonel A. C. YATE, F.R.G.S., F.R.Hist.Soc.

(With Illustrations.)

STARTING from Abadeh, where we had passed the night, at 5 A.M. on the 9th June (1881), and winding along in the deliciously cool morning air, amid villages, fields and gardens, we thoroughly enjoyed our ride to Shulgistan, distant from Abadeh 16 or 17 miles, where we arrived at eight o'clock. Our road, gradually on the ascent, ran almost due north, a distant snow-flecked mountain-range flanking it on the west. Above the mud walls and roofs of the village of Shulgistan rose the

Continued from p. 20.

dome of a mosque, the dilapidated blue tiling of which was indicative certainly of the depredations of time, and possibly of those of the curiohunter also. In the early eighties of the nineteenth century the passion for Persian art treasures was in a measure in its infancy. It would almost seem as if telegraphy had paved the way for the art-collector. We found the Director of the Indo-European Telegraph at Teheran and the Inspector at Dehbid alike devoted to the search for and acquisition of specimens, the first animated by the love of art, the second by the love of lucre. Unless my memory betrays me, Messrs. Ziegler and Co. were already, in 1881, in the field, and, apparently, have as yet far from exhausted the resources of a country which may claim-as far as history enlightens us--to be a pioneer of Aryan art culture and civilisation. As to Persian curios, we have at this moment before us, in one of the most fashionable of the business centres of London, a collection of which the prices are simply fabulous. I can look back to the days, from thirty to fifteen years ago, when the Afghan Boundary Commission (1884-6) and the Art Exhibition at King Edward VII.'s Coronation Durbar at Delhi (1902-3) gave us opportunities of gauging the values of Middle Eastern fabrics, and the only conclusion at which we can arrive is that despite war prices, despite taxation, despite charities rampant, and despite threatened confiscation of capital-the purchaser is more profuse and the seller more extortionate than ever before within the memory of man. I have still good cause to recollect the perils by land and water which waylaid my own collections of 1884-5 on their way from Herat to India; but, in those days, not even Jules Verne fully foresaw the prowess of the submarine menace, and it was scarcely realised that the very struggle for existence would oblige governments to tie down marine transport to the carriage of the necessities of life only. It is true that to the creature who pleaded "Il faut pourtant vivre," Talleyrand replied, "Je n'en vois pas la nécessité"; but Talleyrand was not face to face with the threat of bread riots.

"We left Shulgistan at 8.30, and reached Yezdikhāst (6 farsakhs = about 20 miles) at 11.45. The road traversed a broad uncultivated valley, bounded by sterile hills. The power of the sun was great, and our faces, necks and hands were blistered and very painful. One discerns Yezdikhāst from a long distance, and imagines it to be a village situated on the level of the plain. It is only when one approaches quite close that one discovers a wide fissure in the plain, in which flows a small river, the banks of which are lined with orchards, gardens, and fields of grain and opium. The river-bed, ie. the entire space between the cliffs, which are 60 or 70 feet high, has an average width of about a quarter of a mile. Notwithstanding the barrenness of the surrounding plain and the unattractive mud-hue of the cliffs, the effect of the vale is generally pleasing. Probably during the floods the river rises much above its present level, but it does not appear to reach from cliff to cliff. We descended into this channel by a zigzag road, and, following the right bank of the stream for half a mile, reached a fine new kārwānsarai standing on the right bank just opposite the bridge, which affords