the
Crusades.

** This defile is described at length in the _Anastasi
Papyrus_, No. 1, and the terms used by the writer are in
themselves sufficient evidence of the terror with which the
place inspired the Egyptians. The annals of Thutmosis III.
are equally explicit as to the difficulties which an army
had to encounter here. I have placed this defile near the
point which is now called Umm-el-Fahm, and this site seems
to me to agree better with the account of the expedition of
Thutmosis III. than that of Arraneh proposed by Conder.

Beyond the Mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with
corn and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a
series of undulations, to the foot of Tabor, where it came to an
end. Two side ranges running almost parallel--little Hermon and
Glilboa--disposed in a line from east to west, and united by an almost
imperceptibly rising ground, serve rather to connect the plain of
Megiddo with the valley of the Jordan than to separate them. A single
river, the Kishon, cuts the route diagonally--or, to speak more
correctly, a single river-bed, which is almost waterless for nine months
of the year, and becomes swollen only during the winter rains with the
numerous torrents bursting from the hillsides. As the flood approaches
the sea it becomes of more manageable proportions, and finally
distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons formed behind the
sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over by the sacred
summit of Carmel.*

* In the lists of Thutmosis III. we find under No. 48 the
town of Rosh-Qodshu, the "Sacred Cape," which was evidently
situated at the end of the mountain range, or probably on
the site of Haifah; the name itself suggests the veneration
with which Carmel was invested from the earliest times.

No corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary
engagements, or has witnessed century after century so many armies
crossing its borders and coming into conflict with one another. Every
military leader who, after leaving Africa, was able to seize Gaza and
Ascalon, became at once master of Southern Syria. He might, it is true,
experience some local resistance, and come into conflict with bands
or isolated outposts of the enemy, but as a rule he had no need to
anticipate a battle before he reached the banks of the Kishon.

[Illustration: 196.jpg THE EVERGRE