OCR Text |
Show THE VALLEY OF THE JORDAN. The valley of the Jordan would act as an enormous hot-house for a new colony. Here might be cultivated palms, cotton, indigo, sugar, rice, sorghum besides bananas, pine apples, yams, sweet potatoes, and other field and garden produce. Rising a little higher, the country is adapted to tobacco, maize, castor oil, millet, flax, sugargum [?], melons, gourds, cumin, coriander, anise, ocher [?], brinjals, pomegranates, oranges, figs - and so up to the plains, where wheat, barley, beans, and lentils of various sorts, with olives and vines, would form the staple products. Gilead especially is essentially a country of wine and oil; it is also admirably adapted to silk-culture; while among its forests, carob or locust bean, pistachio, jujube, almond, balsam, kali, and other profitable trees, grow wild in great profusion. All the fruits of Southern Europe, such as apricots, peaches and plums, here grow to perfection; apples, pears, and quinces thrive well on the more extreme elevation, upon which the fruits and vegetables of England might be cultivated, while the quick growing eucalyptus could be planted with advantage on the fertile but treeless plains. Not only does the extraordinary variety of soil and climate thus compressed into a small area offer exceptional advantages from an agricultural point of view, but the inclusion of the Dead Sea within its limits would furnish a vast source of wealth, by the exploitation of its chemical and mineral deposits. The supply of chlorate of potassium, 200,000 tons of which are annually consumed in England, is practically inexhaustible; while petroleum, bitumen, and other lignites can be procured in great quantities upon its shores. There can be little doubt, in fact, that the Dead Sea is a mine of unexplored wealth, which only needs the application of capital and enterprise to make it a most lucrative property. |