Climate of Phoenicia—Varieties—Climate of the coast, in the south, in the north—Climate of the more elevated regions—Vegetable productions—Principal trees—Most remarkable shrubs and fruit-trees—Herbs, flowers, and garden vegetables—Zoology—Land animals—Birds—Marine and fresh-water fish—Principal shell-fish—Minerals.
The long extent of the Phoenician coast, and the great difference in the elevation of its various parts, give it a great diversity of climate. Northern Phoenicia is many degrees colder than southern; and the difference is still more considerable between the coast tracts and the more elevated portions of the mountain regions. The greatest heat is experienced in the plain of Sharon,21 which is at once the most southern portion of the country, and the part most remote from any hills of sufficient elevation to exert an important influence on the temperature. Neither Carmel on the north, nor the hills of Samaria on the east, produce any sensible effect on the climate of the Sharon lowland. The heat in summer is intense, and except along the river courses the tract is burnt up, and becomes little more than an expanse of sand. As a compensation, the cold in winter is very moderate. Snow scarcely ever falls, and if there is frost it is short-lived, and does not penetrate into the ground.22
Above Carmel the coast tract is decidedly less hot than the region south of it, and becomes cooler and cooler as we proceed northwards. Northern Phoenicia enjoys a climate that is delightful, and in which it would be difficult to suggest much improvement. The summer heat is scarcely ever too great, the thermometer rarely exceeding 90º of Fahrenheit,23 and often sinking below 70º. Refreshing showers of rain frequently fall, and the breezes from the north, the east, and the south-east, coming from high mountain tracts which are in part snow-clad, temper the heat of the sun’s rays and prevent it from being oppressive. The winter temperature seldom descends much below 50º; and thus the orange, the lemon and the date-palm flourish in the open air, and the gardens are bright with flowers even in December and January. Snow falls occasionally, but it rarely lies on the ground for more than a few days, and is scarcely ever so much as a foot deep. On the other hand, rain is expected during the winter-time, and the entire line of coast is visited for some months with severe storms and gales, accompanied often by thunder and violent rain,24 which strew the shore with wrecks and turn even insignificant mountain streams into raging torrents. The storms come chiefly from the west and north-west, quarters to which the harbours on the coast are unfortunately open.25 Navigation consequently suffers interruption; but when once the winter is past, a season of tranquillity sets in, and for many months of the year—at any rate from May to October26—the barometer scarcely varies, the sky is unclouded, and rain all but unknown.
As the traveller mounts from the coast tract into the more elevated regions, the climate sensibly changes. An hour’s ride from the plains, when they are most sultry, will bring him into a comparatively cool region, where the dashing spray of the glacier streams is borne on the air, and from time to time a breeze that is actually cold comes down from the mountain-tops.27 Shade is abundant, for the rocks are often perpendicular, and overhand the road in places, while the dense foliage of cedars, or pines, or walnut-trees, forms an equally effectual screen against the sun’s noonday rays. In winter the uplands are, of course, cold. Severe weather prevails in them from November to March;28 snow falls on all the high ground, while it rains on the coast and in the lowlands; the passes are blocked; and Lebanon and Bargylus replenish the icy stories which the summer’s heat has diminished.
The vegetable productions of Phoenicia may be best considered under the several heads of trees, shrubs, herbs, flowers, fruit-trees, and garden vegetables. The chief trees were the palm-tree, the sycamore, the maritime pine, and the plane in the lowlands; in the highlands the cedar, Aleppo pine, oak, walnut, poplar, acacia, shumac, and carob. We have spoken of the former abundance of the palm. At present it is found in comparatively few places, and seldom in any considerable numbers. It grows singly, or in groups of two or three, at various points of the coast from Tripolis to Acre, but is only abundant in a few spots more towards the south, as at Haifa, under Carmel, where “fine date-palms” are numerous in the gardens,29 and at Jaffa, where travellers remark “a broad belt of two or three miles of date-palms and orange-groves laden with fruit."210 The wood was probably not much used as timber except in the earliest times, since Lebanon afforded so many kinds of trees much superior for building purposes. The date-palm was also valued for its fruit, though the produce of the Phoenician groves can never have been of a high quality.
The sycamore, or sycamine-fig, is a dark-foliaged tree, with a gnarled stem when it is old;211 it grows either singly or in clumps, and much more resembles in appearance the English oak than the terebinth does, which has been so often compared to it. The stem is short, and sends forth wide lateral branches forking out in all directions, which renders the tree very easy to climb. It bears a small fig in great abundance, and probably at all seasons, which, however, is “tasteless and woody,"212 though eaten by the inhabitants. The sycamore is common along the Phoenician lowland, but is a very tender tree and will not grow in the mountains.
The plane-tree, common in Asia Minor, is not very frequent either in Phoenicia or Palestine. It occurs, however, on the middle course of the Litany, where it breaks through the roots of Lebanon,213 and also in many of the valleys214 on the western flank of the mountain. The maritime pine (Pinus maritama) extends in forests here and there along the shore,215 and is found of service in checking the advance of the sand dunes, which have a tendency to encroach seriously on the cultivable soil.
Of the upland trees the most common is the oak. There are three species of oak in the country. The most prevalent is an evergreen oak (Quercus pseudococcifera), sometimes mistaken by travellers for a holly, sometimes for an ibex, which covers in a low dense bush many miles of the hilly country everywhere, and occasionally becomes a large tree in the Lebanon valleys,216 and on the flanks of Casius and Bargylus. Another common oak is Quercus Ægilops, a much smaller and deciduous tree, very stout-trunked, which grows in scattered groups on Carmel and elsewhere, “giving a park-like appearance to the landscape."217 The third kind is Quercus infectoria, a gall-oak, also deciduous, and very conspicuous from the large number of bright, chestnut-coloured, viscid galls which it bears, and which are now sometimes gathered for exportation.218
Next to the oak may be mentioned the walnut, which grows to a great size in sheltered positions in the Lebanon range, both upon the eastern and upon the western flank;219 the poplar, which is found both in the mountains220 and in the low country, as especially about Beyrout;221 the Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis), of which there are large woods in Carmel, Lebanon, and Bargylus,222