Mount Casius is, strictly speaking, the termination of a spur from Bargylus; but it has so marked and peculiar a character that it seems entitled to separate description.

Rising up abruptly from the Mediterranean to the height of 5,318 feet, it dominates the entire region in its vicinity, and from the sea forms a landmark that is extraordinarily conspicuous.
Forests of fine trees clothe its flanks, but the lofty summit towers high above them, a bare mass of rock, known at the present day as Jebel-el-Akra, or "the Bald Mountain." It is formed mainly of the same cretaceous limestone as the other mountains of these parts, and like them has a rounded summit; but rocks of igneous origin enter into its geological structure; and in its vegetation it more resembles the mountain ranges of Taurus and Amanus than those of southern Syria and Palestine.

On its north-eastern prolongation, which is washed by the Orontes, lay the enchanting pleasure-ground of Daphne, bubbling with fountains, and bright with flowering shrubs, where from a remote antiquity the Syrians held frequent festival to their favourite deity--the "Dea Syra"-- the great nature goddess.
The elevated tract known to the ancients as Bargylus, and to modern geographers as the Ansayrieh or Nasariyeh mountain-region, runs at right angles to the spur terminating in the Mount Casius, and extends from the Orontes near Antioch to the valley of the Eleutherus.

This is a distance of not less than a hundred miles.

The range forms the western boundary of the lower Coelesyrian valley, which abuts upon it towards the east, while westward it looks down upon the region, partly hill, partly lowland, which may be regarded as constituting "Northern Phoenicia." The axis of the range is almost due north and south, but with a slight deflection towards the south-east.