f two or three thousand feet.
The foot-hills, called the Shefelah, and the Negeb, or "South Country,"
complete the ridge. The highest peak is Jebel Mukhmeel, in Northern
Palestine, rising ten thousand two hundred feet above the sea. Mt.
Tabor, in Galilee, is one thousand eight hundred and forty-three feet
high, while Gerizim and Ebal, down in Samaria, are two thousand eight
hundred and fifty feet and three thousand and seventy-five feet
respectively. The principal mountains in Judaea are Mt. Zion, two
thousand five hundred and fifty feet; Mt. Moriah, about one hundred feet
lower; Mount of Olives, two thousand six hundred and sixty-five feet,
and Mt. Hebron, three thousand and thirty feet. Nazareth, Shechem,
Jerusalem, and Hebron belong to the Mountain Region.

The Jordan Valley is the lowest portion of the earth's surface. No other
depressions are more than three hundred feet below sea level, but the
Jordan is six hundred and eighty-two feet lower than the ocean at the
Sea of Galilee, and nearly thirteen hundred feet lower where it enters
the Dead Sea. This wonderful depression, which includes the Dead Sea,
forty-five miles long, and the valley south of it, one hundred miles in
length, is two hundred and fifty miles long and from four to fourteen
miles in width, and is called the Arabah. The sources of the Jordan
are one hundred and thirty-four miles from the mouth, but the numerous
windings of the stream make it two hundred miles long. The Jordan
is formed by the union of three streams issuing from springs at an
elevation of seventeen hundred feet above the sea. The principal source
is the spring at Dan, one of the largest in the world, as it sends forth
a stream twenty feet wide and from twenty to thirty inches deep. The
spring at Banias, the Caesarea Philippi of the Scriptures, is the
eastern source. The Hashbany flows from a spring forming the western
source. A few miles south of the union of the streams above mentioned
the river widens into the waters of Merom, a small lake nearly on a
level with the Mediterranean. In the next few miles it descends rapidly,
and empties into the Sea of Galilee, called also the Sea of Chinnereth,
Sea of Tiberias, and Lake of Gennesaret. In the sixty-five miles from
the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea the fall is about six hundred feet.
The rate of descent is not uniform throughout the whole course of the
river. In one section it drops sixty feet to the mile, while there is
one stretch