. Palestine : the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land. and barren mountains, bounding it like a says, The land of Idumea lay before me in barrenness and desolation ; no trees grew inthe valley, and no verdure on the mountain tops. All was bare, dreary, and desolate. a Theopposite, or eastern, face of these mountains, however, presents a very different appearance,not only from their apparent lowness, owing, as we have already described, to the elevation ofthe eastern plateau in which they terminate, but from its regular form and unbroken course,and from its being the
. Palestine : the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land. and barren mountains, bounding it like a says, The land of Idumea lay before me in barrenness and desolation ; no trees grew inthe valley, and no verdure on the mountain tops. All was bare, dreary, and desolate. a Theopposite, or eastern, face of these mountains, however, presents a very different appearance,not only from their apparent lowness, owing, as we have already described, to the elevation ofthe eastern plateau in which they terminate, but from its regular form and unbroken course,and from its being the only part covered uniformly with vegetable mould. This was too im-portant a feature in so stony or sandy a region to have been overlooked, and accordingly wehere find numerous marks of ancient cultivation. Stones which have been arranged to markthe limits of fields, as well as the ruins of separate habitations and villages, scattered every-where over this elevated country, still attest the industry of the ancient inhabitants in cultivatingan apparently unfriendly [Mount Hor.] The tallest summit among the mountains of Seir is Mount Hor, on which Aaron died, andwhose towering bulk is a land-mark to the wanderer afar off in the surrounding deserts. Itoffers a commanding view over the plains and mountains below. If I had never stood onthe top of Mount Sinai, says the last-cited traveller, I should say that nothing could exceedthe desolation of the view from the summit of Mount Hor; its most striking objects being thedreary and rugged mountains of Seir, bare and naked of trees and verdure, and heaving theirlofty summits to the skies, as if in a vain and fruitless effort to excel the mighty pile, on thetop of which the high-priest of Israel was buried. Yet even here all is not barren. The interior of these desolate mountains—their valleys andtheir hollows—present many a scene of verdure and beauty. While the same writer, in sum-ming up his impressions, remembers that the
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