Fountains are rare, and their supplies of water scant}' and precarious among the mountains of Benjamin and Judah. Wells take their place, bored deep into the white soft limestone rock ; covered cisterns, into which the rain-water is guided, are also very numerous, and large open tanks. The glens which descend westward are long and winding, with dry rocky beds, and banks breaking down to them in terraced declivities. The lower slopes near the plain of Philistia are neither so bare nor so rugged as those nearer the crest of the ridge. Dwarf trees and extensive shrubberies, and aromatic plants, partially cover them ; while little groves of ol- ives, and orchards of figs and pomegranates, appear around most of the villages. The valleys, too, become wider, sometimes expanding, as Surar, es-Sumt (Elah), and Beit JibrSn, into rich and beautiful cornfields. Tlie eastern declivities of the ridge, so fertile and pictu- resque in Samaria, are here a wilderness — bare, white, and absolutely desolate ; without trees or grass or stream or foimtain. Naked slopes of white gravel and white rock descend rapidly and irregularly from the
PALESTINE
562
PALESTINE
brow of the ridge, till at length they dip in the frown- ing precipices of Quarantania, Feshkah, Engedi, and Masada, into the Jordan valley or the Dead Sea. Naked ravines, too, like huge fissures, with perpendicular walls of rock, often several hundred feet in height, furrow these slopes from top to bottom. The wild and savage grandeur of wadys Filrah, el-Kelt, en-Nar, and Khurci- lun is almost appalling. This region is the Wihletiiess of Judita. It extends from the parallel of Bethel on the north to the southern border of Palestine. Its length is about forty miles, and its breadth averages nine. It has always been a wilderness, and it must always con- tinue so (Judg. i, 16; Matt, iii, 1) — the home of the wandering shepherd (1 8am. xvii, 28) and the prowl- ing bandit (Luke x, 30). It is the only part of Pales- tine to wliich that name can be properly applied. See
JUDAII.
In the centre of this rugged region, on the very crest of the mountain-ridge, girt about with the muniments of nature, stood Jerusalem and the other historic cities and strongholds of the kingdom of Judah — many of them taking their names from their lofty sites, as Gib- eon and Kamah and Gibcah and Geba. In vigorous exercise among these mountains, and in following and defending their flocks over the bare ridges and througli the wild glens of the wilderness, the hardy soldiers of David received their training; and they proved that in mountain warfare they were invincible. This is not a region for corn. The husbandman would obtain from its thin, parched soil a poor return for his hard labor. But the terraced hill-sides, the warm limestone strata, and the sunny skies render it the very best tield for the successful culture of the vine and the fig; while the aromatic shrubs of the wilderness, and the succulent herbage among the rocks and glens, afforded suitable food for flocks of sheep and goats. The dying patriarch appears to have had his eye on this region when he blessed Judah in these words: "Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine ; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes: his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk" (Gen. xlix, 11, 12). Though this section of the range now seems barren and desolate, no district in Palestine bears traces of such dense popu- lation in former days. Every height is crowned with a ruin ; the remains of towns and villages thickly dot the whole country. Its ruins, its terraced hills, and its arid tortuous glens are now the distinguishing features of Judaja.
The southern declivities of the mountain-range have some marked and peculiar features, which probably gained for them a distinctive name, the Negeb, or "South Country." From Hebron, where the ridge begins to de- cline, to Beersheba, where it finally melts away into the desert of Tih, this section extends. Here are bare round- ed white or light-gray hills, gradually becoming smaller and farther apart, divided by long irregular dry valleys, which slowly become wider and more desolate, until at length hill and dale merge into an open undulating pla- teau. The soil on these southern hills is thin and poor; but in some of the valleys it is richer, and during spring and early summer the pasture is luxuriant. It was one of the regions most frequented by the patriarchs. It was a dry parched land, as its Scripture name Xegeb would seem to imply. It contains no perennial streams. Its torrent-beds are as dry during a great part of the year as its hill-tops; it is only after heavy rains, here very rare even in winter, that they contain any water. Foinitains, too, are few and far between ; and hence the patriarchs, like the modern nomads who pasture their flocks on it, were forced to depend on wells and tanks for tlu'ir su|i|)ly of water. Tiiese are very numerous. Miss Martineau, in riding from the desert to Hebron, notes, "All the day we continually saw gaping wells beside our i)ath, and under every angle of the hills where they were likely to be kept tilled" {Eastern Life, p. 433). SVaterwas absolutely necessary for the wants