"The prevailing scenery of the region is of short, steep hillsides and narrow glens, with a very few great trees, and thickly covered by brushwood and oak-scrub—crags and scalps of limestone breaking through, and a rough grey torrent-bed at the bottom of each glen.... Caves, of course, abound—near the villages, gaping black dens for men and cattle, but up the unfrequented glens they are hidden by hanging bush, behind which you disturb only the wild pigeon. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing; and although in the maze of hills you may wander for hours without meeting a man, or seeing a house, you are seldom out of sound of the human voice, shepherds and ploughmen calling to their cattle and to each other across the glens. Higher up you rise to moorlands, with rich grass if there is a spring, but otherwise, heath, thorns, and rough herbs that scent the wind. Bees abound here, too, and dragon-flies, kites and crows; sometimes an eagle floats over the cliffs of Judaea. The sun beats strong, but you see and feel the sea; the high mountains are behind, at night they breathe upon these ridges gentle breezes, and the dews are very heavy.
"Altogether it is a rough, happy land, with its glens and moors, its mingled brushwood and barley-fields; frequently under cultivation, but for the most part broken and thirsty, with few wells and many hiding places; just the home for strong border-men, like Samson, and just the theatre for that guerilla warfare, varied occasionally by pitched battles, which Israel and Philistia, the Maccabees and the Syrians, waged with each other."[2]
At last the foot-hills merge into lofty mountains and series of plateaus, or table-lands, surrounded by high peaks, appear. Here was Judaea, the true home of the Hebrews. Farther north, and rising directly from the Coast Plain, without the intervening foot-hills, was Samaria. The physical outlines of this long, narrow range determined in advance that it would not permanently be politically united.
Judaea was quite secure in her mountain heights. On the east her mountains descend abruptly to the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the south lies the desert; on the east the low foot-hills, and on the north the table-land ends in ten miles of wild, waste land. "A desolate, fatiguing extent of rocky platforms and ridges, or moorland strewn with boulders, and fields of shallow soil thickly mixed with stone, they are a true border—more fit for the building of barriers than for the cultivation of food."
Some parts of this stony plateau were fit for cultivation, but for the most part, Judaea was a pastoral land—a country of shepherds and herdsmen. Flocks of sheep fed on the moorlands in ancient times, as they do today. Water has always been scanty and is preserved in wells and cisterns for the cattle during months of drouth.
Samaria possesses softer outlines and is a land beautified by nature. As Judaea was isolated and secure in her natural boundaries, so was Samaria open to approach. The "openness" of the land is constantly dwelt upon by those who picture its location. It was difficult to resist invasion and Samaria was attacked much more often than her sister to the south. Samaria was a fruitful land, yielding to cultivation; she lay open to influences on every hand, and was the first to receive fresh impulses and ideas. "Today, amid the peaceful beauty of the scene—the secluded vale covered with corn fields, through which the winding streams flash and glisten into the hazy distance, and the gentle hill rises without a scarp to the olives waving on its summit—it is possible to appreciate Isaiah's name for Samaria, the crown of pride of Ephraim, the flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley."[3]
East of both countries and the Central Range which contained them, flows the Jordan. Geological ages ago it is supposed that a great sea occupied the valley of the Jordan and the regions on either side. Beneath its deep waters, layers of limestone accumulated. In course of time, mighty convulsions within the earth hurled these layers of rock in twain and threw them up on both sides, until the present mountain ranges were formed. At the same time a series of rocks were cast up diagonally across this region to the south, thus enclosing a portion of the salt waters within the basin so formed. Ages of rain and of glaciers followed and when these abated, the new surface was left to develop its system of drainage. The situation at present is almost identical with that in early Bible times. In the northern part of Palestine, at the base of the Lebanons, a series of streams, mountain-born, take a southernly direction and empty into a marshy pool known as Lake Huleh; from the southern part of this lake the river Jordan flows on to the Lake of Galilee, whence the stream once again issues forth, this time down a steep incline, giving it rapid impetus of motion, from whence comes its name: Jordan—the Down-comer. At last its valley widens and by several estuaries the river finally empties into the Dead Sea.
The beauty attending many rivers of the earth is lacking in the Jordan. Cutting down its channels in a rift left already deep by eruption, this valley lies deep below the sea-level and is exceedingly hot. Malaria lurks in the jungles that border the river-sides, and at no time has the region been thickly populated. The river is not suited to irrigation, but certain portions of the valley are watered by its tributaries sufficiently to make gardens possible.
The Dead Sea occupies the lowest portion of the valley. Soundings have shown it to be very deep. Not only are its waters heavily charged with salt, but other chemicals make yet more uninhabitable its basin. No fish or other form of life lives in its waters, which possess remarkable clearness and are intensely blue. Having no outlets save evaporation, and lying where heat is great, the sea is like a mighty caldron, above which a column of steam rises constantly. 6,000,000 tons of water are estimated to rise from it daily in the form of vapor.
From its very nature, the Jordan was not a river to which a nation might become devoted—as, for example, the Egyptians were to their Nile. Nevertheless, no other stream has become so embodied into literature, or so endeared to a great religious world. The Hebrews regarded the Jordan as a boundary—a frontier. Significant is the fact that when it is mentioned in the Bible it is generally accompanied by some word meaning over or across. Over Jordan, beyond the stream which because of its fever-breeding, lion-populated jungles and its strange sea, signified death, destruction, calamity, rather than life. Beyond the Jordan, then, lay the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.