f Palestine, though fierce, is still famous for its honey-producing
powers. The Perizzites or "fellahin" industriously tilled the fields,
and high-walled cities stood on the mountain as well as on the plain.

The highlands, however, were deficient in water. A few streams fall into
the sea south of Carmel, but except in the spring, when they have been
swollen by the rains, there is but little water in them. The Kishon,
which irrigates the plain of Megiddo, is a more important river, but it
too is little more than a mountain stream. In fact, the Jordan is the
only river in the true sense of the word which Palestine possesses.
Rising to the north of the waters of Merom, now called Lake Huleh, it
flows first into the Lake of Tiberias, and then through a long deep
valley into the Dead Sea. Here at a depth of 1293 feet below the level
of the sea it is swallowed up and lost; the sea has no outlet, and parts
with its stagnant waters through evaporation alone. The evaporation has
made it intensely salt, and its shores are consequently for the most
part the picture of death.

In the valley of the Jordan, on the other hand, vegetation is as
luxuriant and tropical as in the forests of Brazil. Through a dense
undergrowth of canes and shrubs the river forces its way, rushing
forward towards its final gulf of extinction with a fall of 670 feet
since it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled by
it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake
Huleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deep
gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on either side.

The Jordan has taken its name from its rapid fall. The word comes from a
root which signifies "to descend," and the name itself means "the
down-flowing." We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of the
nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the
Oppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses III.,
who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness,
enumerates the "Yordan" at Medinet Habu among his conquests in
Palestine. In both cases it is associated with "the Lake of Rethpana,"
which must accordingly be the Egyptian name of the Dead Sea. Rethpana
might correspond with a Hebrew Reshphon, a derivative from Resheph, the
god of fire. Canaanite mythology makes the sparks his "children" (Job v.
7) and it may be, therefore, that in this old name of the Dead Sea