Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/180

164 164 THE PLAINS OF THE JORDAN.

Into the recess descends the third in the series of parallel valleys, the Wady Ifjim. The passage has a peculiarity rivalling that of the outlet of el Bukei'a, the first of these valleys. The head of the recess is divided into two by a narrow spur about a mile long, which projects southward from the mountain, and has a gorge on both sides, the western being a rocky chasm, one side of which is the beginning of the long line of cliffs already mentioned. The Wady Ifjim comes down from a beautiful plain about two miles north of the chasm, through a rocky cleft, as if it were going to descend through the chasm, or parallel gorge on the east of the spur. But instead of doing so, the wady deflects slightly to the westward, and comes out into the plain by a chasm from the west, which meets the northerly chasm at its outlet. A Eoman road which passes from the Ghor, ascends by the spur aforesaid, and skirts the eastern side of the wady into the Sahel or Plain of Ifjim, and so onward to the Plain of Salim and Nablus.

In another respect the Wady Ifjim is a counterpart of the Bukei'a. For as the head of the latter is overlapped by an expansion of Wady Far'ah towards the north, so is Wady Ifjim overlapped by another expansion towards the south, as follows : From the Sahel or Plain of Ifjim, there is a continuous ascent by the Wady el Kerad to the elevated Plain of Salim, which runs in the same line, but drains in a contrary direction to the Wady Far'ah. See page 78. Another ascent from the Plain of Ifjim proceeds westward by Wady Zamur to Yanun, and thence by a valley in the same line, but draining in the opposite direction, to the Plain of Mukhnah, which is a continuation of the Plain of Salim, but in another basin.

About a mile and a half south of the base of Kurn Surtabeh are the remains of the Herodian City of Phasaelis, now Khurbet Fusail. The site is on a wady of the same name which joins Wady el Humr in the Zor. The wadys on the south belong to the basin of Wady el 'Auj ah, which drains the southern divi- sion of this part of the Ghor, up to the commencement of the Plain of Jericho.