Palestine]
is a wide plain, with an altitude of about 500 ft., narrowing as it rises southward to the heights of Amir Musa Dagh (altitude 1,800 ft.). Thence it falls southward to the broad Antioch plain, El-Amk, with its lakes and marshes. The whole of this northern part of the depression is extremely fertile.
From El-Amk the depression narrows and rises towards the south, carrying the Orontes, and widens out again into the marshy and almost level valley plain of El-Ghab, which is about 6 miles by 40 miles, and extremely fertile. From Hama it bends eastwards, and emerges upon the fertile Homs plain. Between the high ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon the depression becomes the plain of Sahlet Baalbek, much of which is barren and stony, although with fertile belts. In the latitude of Baalbek is the highest point of the depression (3,600 ft.), on a low swell, where are the upper sources of the Orontes flowing north and the Litani flowing south. With a gentle fall to southwards the plain reaches Lake Hule basin, at about sea-level. This forms the head of the remarkable "rift," or deep, trough-like valley, known as the Ghor, down which the Jordan runs to the Dead Sea. The Ghor falls rapidly to a depth of about 680 ft. below sea-level at the Lake of Tiberias; the valley is here not more than 4 miles in breadth. At the Dead Sea, about 65 miles further south, the valley has reached a depth below the sea of 1,300 ft., the depression continuing downwards to twice that depth in the bed of the sea. South of the Dead Sea the depression is prolonged for another 100 miles to the Red Sea by the wide Wadi Araba.
The Eastern Plateau.—In Kurd Dagh, the northern part of this region, broken ridges rise to a height of over 4,000 ft., but at Aleppo the altitude is 1,205 ft. The plateau falls easily to the Euphrates in rolling downs intersected by valleys, which are generally fertile, though scantily watered. The Aleppo region falls southward in rolling hills to the lower plateau and to the desert, which commences at this point. Southward lies the plain of Homs, a level and fertile
