me is not Semitic, and an Aryan
origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof;
according to Strabo (xvi. ii. Sec. 7, p. 750), it was
originally called Typhon, and was only styled Orontes after
a certain Orontes had built the first bridge across it. The
name of Axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been
given to it by Greek colonists, in memory of a river in
Macedonia. This is probably the origin of the modern name of
Asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which Arab
tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a
popular etymology which likened Axios to Asi, the
identification was all the easier since it justifies the
epithet by the violence of its current.

The Litany rises a short distance from the Orontes; it flows at first
through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and
forces it into a channel between the spurs of the Lebanon and the
Galilaean hills. The water thence makes its way between two cliffs of
perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that
the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active
man could readily leap across it. Near Yakhmur some detached rocks
appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying
buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over
the torrent. The basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending
eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed
into two beds of unequal slope. The central part of the valley is given
up to marshes. It is only towards the south that we find cornfields,
vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the
plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. Towards the north,
the alluvial deposits of, the Orontes have gradually formed a black
and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other
produce. Cole-Syria, after having generously nourished the Oriental
empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the
Roman world, under the capable rule of the Caesars.

Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and
soil. That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous
region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually
towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over
with bare and rounded hills, and s