The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-14 00:00:00

- •
NOTES ON SYRIA.
(From Colburn's United Service Magazine.) .11
The periodical overflow of the Jordan in fo
times, which was said to take place at " the tune 4\
harvest (Josh. iii. Ls)—here gathered in about Ma
—was, no doubt, caused by the melting of the snows
on the Anti-Libanus; and, if this inundation does not-4.lRa lIMS
take place in the spring, at the present day, it may
probably be owing to the channel of the river having
become much deeper than it once was.
Lions and other beasts of prey were said thee to
infest its banks ; but now the only undomesticated
animals to be met with are wild hogs and gazelles—a
least we neither heard of nor saw any others; and,
although Lamartine mentions certain " rugissemens, '
which he implies might have proceeded from the king
of the forest, the noise more probably was nothing
more than the lowing of some matronly cow, in
search•of her strayed progeny. We did not even see
or hear in the " sweet woods 4 those " tuneful nightin-
gales" mentioned in some other poetical effusions.
After crossing innumerable brooks, which, from
their appearance, 1 concluded to be perennial, and
passing, on our rileat, three large tumuli, of an oblong
shape, we arrived, in about two hours from our first
entrance into the Ghor, at the small Fellah Arab vil-
lage ofßysan, standing among the remains of the Beth-
shan of Scripture, where Saul's body was nailed to
the wall by tie Philistines, and afterwards known by
the name of Scythopolis, from its having been seized
by the ScytLians in the days of Josiah, and kept pos-
session of by them as long as they continued in Lower
Asia.

Burckliardt—generally so observant of everything
—is guilty of a sad oversight, when, in speaking of
Bysan, he says—" The only remains are large heaps
of black hewn stones, many foundations of houses,
and the fragments of a few columns : I only saw a
single shaft of a column standing. In one of the val-
leys is a large mound of earth, which appeared to be
artificial."

Had he taken the trouble to go to the base of the
" artificial mound," on which probably stood the
Acropolis, near the upright shaft of the column he
mentions, he would have found some splendid remains
of a Roman amphitheatre, sixty-five paces in dia-
meter—many of the seats still perfect, and some of
the vomitories, or dens for the wild beasts, in a capital
state of preservation. Besides these classical remains,
are to be seen, immediately to the westward of the
present hamlet, the ruins of several buildings, pro-
bably constructed in the time of the Crusades.

But what tends more than anything else to identify
places menticned in ancient history, is the similarity
of the natural productions therein alluded to with
those found on the same spot in the present day. Na-
ture seldom varies, whilst the proudest works of man
are but as chaff in the wind before the all-destroy-
ing hand of Time. Where are now the kingly cities
of Memphis Babylon, and Nineveh ? Where are the
" palaces of state" and the proud walls of Troy ? All
crumbled into dust, and amalgamated with the sur-
rounding soil ! whilst the sycamore still grows on the
banks of the Nile,—the sedgy reeds" on those of
the Scamander—and the oaks of Basilan, or Beth-
shan, mentioned in Scripture, are yet to be found in
the neighbourhood of modern Bysan.