Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/162

146 146 THE PLAINS OF THE JORDAN.

marsh, but no through passage could be found ; and the reeds enclosing these channels resisted every attempt to force a way through them. A continuous channel is delineated in the New Survey, but no explanation of it has yet appeared.

The edge of the marsh for half a mile is a belt of ordinary bog, up to the knees in water. Then comes a deeper belt where yellow water-lilies flourish. Then a belt of tall reeds with white water-lily in the open spaces. Beyond is an impene- trable wilderness of Papyrus or Babeer extending to the eastern side. This is a thin floating crust of vegetation over depths of about twelve feet of peaty mud and water. The only footing is on the slippery roots of the papyrus. Both Dr. Thomson and Dr. Tristram nearly lost their lives among it in pursuit of wild fowl.*

TJie Hulek Lake.

The lake is triangular, with its apex at the south, where it runs into the Jordan. It commences at the southern end of the marsh, and is about four miles long from north to south, its breadth along the marsh being perhaps greater, but the eastern part is unsurveyed. Mr. Macgregor states that " the lake lies quite close to the hills on the Bashan side." " Eob Eoy on the Jordan," 6th edit., p. 271. But the hills have never been properly delineated, nor has the practicability of passing along the eastern edge of the water been yet tested. Dr. Tristram describes the western edge as " fringed for the most part by a bank about six feet high, below which is a narrow strip of deep shingle formed chiefly of the debris of shells, and the bank waving with wheat to its very edge. The lake had been five feet deeper in winter, and its ordinary height might be told by the fringe of oleanders, which grow stilted like mangroves with several feet of root at present high in the air. The water was shallow at this side, for acres of yellow water lilies floated on the surface, and a few patches of white nymphsea grew behind papyrus tufts." " Land of Israel," 589.

The observations of the Palestine Exploration Survey, make


 * Thomson's "Land and Book," 257. Tristram's " Land of Israel," 688.