Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/68

52 52 THE MEDITERRANEAN WATERSHED.

from the northern margin at Kh. el'Ahbar and Wady Fukin, and runs westward as Wady el Jindy to Kh. Shuweikeh (Shocoh). Here it receives a tributary from the northern margin of the basin, on the south of Kefr Som, which follows the margin westward as far as Beit Nettif. At Kh. Shu- weikeh also is the junction of Wady es Sur, which rises at Kh. Beit Nasif near Terkumieh and runs almost due north, in a line prolonged by the plain of es Sunt, the Wady en Najil and the Plain of Surar, the Wady Ali, and the Plain of Beit Nuba to the foot of the Beth Horon Pass. This remarkable depression is about thirty miles in length, and serves to divide the mountains of Judah from the lowland hills of the Shephelah. The Wady es Sur is the recipient of a succession of valleys which have their heads along the eastern margin of the basin, between a point west of Safa and Beit Sur near Hulhul. The cave of Adullam according to Mons. Ganneau is at Aid el Ma in the Wady es Sur.

Below Kh. Shuweikeh, the Wady es Sunt enters a gorge through which it zigzags on its way to the Plain of Philistia which it reaches at the foot of Tell es Safi, the Blanche garde of the Crusaders, and perhaps the Libnah of the Bible. The altitude of Tell es Safi is 695 feet, and the wady at its foot is 395 feet above the sea. In its passage through the gorge it receives a valley from the south, traversed by the Eoman road from Beit Jibrin. Near its entrance into the plain it receives another affluent from Kudna (alt. 810 feet), Eana (alt. 660 feet), Dhikerin (alt. 680 feet) and Deir es Dhiban (alt. 665 feet). It crosses the rolling plain in a north-westerly direction to Jisr Esdud or the bridge of Ashdod, where it joins the outlet of the central and southern parts of the basin.

2. The central branch is best known as Wady el Afranj (Feranj of former maps). This branch drains the eastern waterparting, where it abuts on that of Wady Guzzeh, about the heads of Wady el Khulil, around Hebron. It rises from two small feeders skirting the border on the east of Dura, and