Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/47

31 MINOR BASINS WEST OF CARMEL, ETC. Hi

Shefeia, the Wady Madhy falls in from Kumbazeh, on the northern margin of the basin. Its length is about 11 miles, and its breadth about four miles. The hills which form the southern waterparting of this basin, and divide it from the Nahr ez Zerka, terminate on the west in the remarkable promontory of el Khashm, on the north of Caesarea. Here also the narrow plain of Tanturah* which extends along the western foot of Mount Carmel, and has a width of one mile and a half between el Khashm and the sea, suddenly expands into the famous Plain of Sharon, which attains a width of ten miles, and will be further noticed hereafter.

At the Zerka and el Khashm, the summit of the receding hills extends eastward in an arc behind Subbarin and Kefrein, to Umm el Fahm and Kefreireh, where the range sinks down to the Sahel or Plain of 'Arrabeh, and the Wady Selhab in the Mefjir basin. The hills on the east of the plain are offshoots of Mount Gilboa ; and those on the south culminate in the range of Sheikh Beiazid (alt. 2,375 feet), on the north of Samaria, and a portion of the southern water- parting of the Mefjir basin.

The eastern waterpartings of the basins of Nahr ed Dufleh and Nahr ez Zerka, form a low saddle, which, with those basins and the Wady el Matabin on the north, as well as Wady el Mihl and the wadys of the perennial affluents of the Mukutt'a rising at Kh. er Ruhaneh and Jarah, occupy a de- pression of the hills called Belad er Euhah, dividing Mount Carmel from the range of Jebel Sh. Iskander and Umm el Khataf, in the Basin of Nahr el Mefjir. See pp. 34, 222. The altitudes and other incidents lead to this conclusion, and thus is added orographic to the hydrographic evidence on this subject, which was first noticed in page 29.

The Basin of Nahr ez Zerka.

The basin of Nahr ez Zerka lies between the villages of Subarin on the north, Kefrein on the east, and Kefr Kara 011


 * So called by the present writer, in the absence of any previous name.