“Pure element of waters! wheresoe’er Thou dost forsake thy subterranean haunts, Green herbs, bright flowers, and berry-bearing plants, Rise into life, and in thy train appear.”
Upon the large circular valley-plain of Bœotia, the heights of Parnassus on the west, Helicon on the south, and Cithæron on the east, send down streams, covering the undulating surface of this Classic Land with a life-sustaining vegetation.
The same physical causes--high lands and the contiguous sea--operate, in Judea as in Greece, to render it a well-watered country--a “land of brooks,” according to its Scripture designation. There are no considerable rivers, owing to the scanty extent of its hydrographical basins; but the melting of the snow on the high mountains of Syria, and the periodical sound of an “abundance of rain,” contribute to furnish an ample irrigation. Its principal stream--the Jordan--though only one of the fifth class, and not remarkable for picturesque beauty except in the upper part of its course, has a sacred and historic interest, which will always strongly attract attention to it, while it exhibits a singular physical peculiarity. This is the depression of the valley, in which it flows, below the level of the Mediterranean, through the whole distance between the Sea of Tiberias and the Dead Sea; and the great inclination of its descent from the one to the other, amounting at a mean to very nearly eighteen feet per mile. Hence the force of its current, notwithstanding a comparatively small volume of water, and the few windings that mark its channel. Speaking of its appearance near the site of Jericho, Dr. Robinson states: “There was a still though very rapid current. We estimated the breadth of the stream to be from eighty to one hundred feet. The guides supposed it now to be ten or twelve feet deep. The current was so strong, that even Komeh, a stout swimmer of the Nile, was carried down several yards in crossing.” Upon the authority of some phrases in the English version of the Scriptures, which, perhaps, do not express the sense of the original Hebrew, it has been generally supposed that the Jordan periodically inundated the country in its neighborhood, at, and for some time after, the Israelitish conquest of it. If this were so, either the river must have worn for itself a deeper bed, or the quantity of rain in Palestine must have largely diminished, for there is now no overflow of its banks. At present, the “swellings of Jordan”--one of the phrases alluded to--amount only to a slight annual rise. Copious rains descend upon the mountains round its sources, and the melting of the snows of Lebanon supply numerous temporary torrents; but these contributions are received into the capacious basins of the lakes Merom and Tiberias, and are there spread over an extensive surface, so as to prevent the level of the river from rising into inundation.