Note 1233 — Chapter XV · —Mountain Barriers And Their Passes

Though modern engineering skill, especially when backed by a political policy, may cause certain passes to gain in historical importance at the cost of others, the rule holds that passes are never quite insignificant. Their influence is persistent through the ages. They are nature-made thoroughfares, traversed now by undisciplined hordes of migrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocks and guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does history repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain gates. In the Pass of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyrenees between Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army of Charlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in 778;1233 through this breach the Black Prince in 1367 led his troops to the victory of Navarette; in the Peninsular War a division of Wellington's army in 1813 moved northward up this valley, driving the French before them; and by this route Soult advanced southward across the frontier for the relief of the French forces shut up in Pamplona. The history of Palestine may be read in epitome in the annals of the Vale of Jezreel, where the highlands of Palestine sink to a natural trough before rising again to the hill country of Galilee and the mountain range of high Lebanon. This was the avenue for war and trade between the Nile and Euphrates, between Africa and Asia. Here the Canaanites expanded eastward from the coast, cutting off northern Israel in Galilee from Samaria and Judea. Here Gideon turned back the incursions of the Midianites or western Arabs. Here was the open road for Assyrians, Egyptians, for Greek armies under Antiochus, and Roman armies under Pompey, Mark Antony, Vespasian and Titus. Hither came the Saracens from the east in 634 A. D. to rout the Greek army, and later the Crusaders from the west, to secure with castle and fortress this key to the Holy Land. Finally, hither came Napoleon from Egypt in 1799 on his way to the Euphrates.1234