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George Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1901), 120-21.
The view from Ebal virtually covers the whole land, with the exception of the Negeb. . . . Looking south, you have at your feet the pass through the range, with Nablus; then over it the mass of Gerizim, with a ruin or two; and then twenty-four miles of hill-tops, at the back of which you dimly discern a tower. That is Neby Samwil, the ancient Mizpeh. Jerusalem is only five miles beyond, and to the west the tower overlooks the Shephelah. Turning westwards, you see—nay, you almos feel—the range letting itself down, by irregulat terrances, on to the plain; the plain itself flattened by the height from which you look, but really undulating to mounds of one and two hundred feet; beyond the plain the gleaming sandhills of the coast and the infinite blue sea. Joppa lies south-west thirty-three miles; Caesarea north-west twenty-nine. Turning northwards, we have the long ridge of Carmel running down from its summit, perhaps thirty-five miles distant, to the low hills that separate it from our range . . . over the hills of Galilee in a haze, and above the haze the glistening shoulders of Hermon, at seventy-five miles . . . Sweeping south from Hermon, the eastern horizon is the edge of Hauran above the Lake of Galilee, continued by the edge of Mount Gilead exactly east of us, and by the edge of Moab, away to the south-east. This line of the Eastern Range is maintained at a pretty equal level, nearly that on which we stand, and seems unbroken, save by the incoming valleys of the Yarmuk and the Jabbok. It is only twenty-five miles away, and on the near side of it lies the Jordan Valley—a great wide gulf, of which the bottom is out of sight. On this side [of the] Jordan the foreground is the hilly bulwark of Mount Ephraim, penetrated by a valley coming up the Jordan into the plain of the Mukhneh to meet the pass that splits the range at our feet.
©ALBERITH