'The Expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order of the British government, in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837; preceded by geographical and historical notices of the regions situated between the rivers Nile and Indus. In four volumes. With fourteen maps and charts, and embellished with ninety-seven plates, besides numerous wood-cuts. Volume the first.' [‎534] (625/905)

534
climates of syria.
[chap. xxi.
tracts the winters are so mild that oranges, bananas, &c., flourish
in the open air. The summer, however, brings with it a
clammy and oppressive, although fertilizing heat, and the
winter and summer have each a rainy season. The first con
tinues at intervals from November to January, and the second,
setting in at the beginning of April, speedily fills the grain.
Climate of the A comparatively mild winter prevails, with some rain, and
parts," eaStern occasional intervals of frost and snow, in the third climate,
which comprehends the south-eastern parts of Syria; the snow,
however, only remains on the ground for a short time. A
high degree of temperature, accompanied by dry parching
winds, belongs to the summer in this zone. The winds here
alluded to come from the bordering desert, and sweep over the
tracts stretching southward, as well as the pasture grounds
northward and eastward of the capital; and their effect is in
creased in consequence of these tracts being screened from the
humid winds which prevail between the coast and the western
slopes of Lebanon,
insalubrity of The latter portions, and indeed many other parts of the
the coast. Syrian territory, are insalubrious, as is shown by the number
of deaths in the principal towns; for Yafa, Akka, Sai'de, Tri
poli, Ladikiyeh, Tortosa, Beirut, and even Damascus, suffer at
certain times from fever ; and to this may be added the ravages
of the small-pox. The rest of the territory, particularly the
plains towards, and bordering upon the desert, may be consi
dered healthy, although the mortality is considerable, especially
during the visitations of the plague, which, from patients being
abandoned by their friends (through fear of contagion rather
than from the violence of the disease itself), sweeps away
thousands. Not even in the west does the patient who is
attacked get any thing like a fair chance of recovery, being
wholly or partly deserted; though, as will be noticed in an
other part of this work, 1 the disease seems to be only a form
of typhus fever.
In the districts of Tripoli, Akka, and Damascus, three
descriptions of soil prevail. In general that of the moun-
In the Personal Narrative.