Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/91

75 MINOK BASINS. 75

The Ghor or upper ground at the foot of the hills, must be distinguished from the Zor or bottom of the valley, about 150 feet lower, in which the channel of the river, cut still deeper, meanders. On the north of Wady el Maleh the Ghor is widened out to the foot of the terrace of Beisan which is about 400 feet higher, and the hills, at first only set back from the edge of the terrace, gradually recede further and further westward, up the yalley of Jezreel, and along the Plain of Esdraelon, to Mount Carmel and the Sea.

South of the Wady el Maleh, the hills encroach upon the Ghor, and reduce it to a narrow terrace, which comes to a minimum on the east of Eas Umm okah (alt, 840 feet). The Zor also frequently cuts gaps in the Ghor, where the wadys descent} into it. This narrowed part of the Jordan Valley extends southward to the Wady Abu Sidreh, when the hills "begin to recede westward, and the Gfyor again expands, widening gradually (except where the Wady Far'ah opens into it), till it acquires its fullest breadth in the plains of'Jericho, on the south of !urn Surtubeh.

Southward between the Wady 'Abu Sidreh and the great Wady Far'ah, only one secondary wady can be singled out for notice. It comes from the hills between the Bukei'a and the Far'ah, and rises in Eas IJmin el Kharrubeh (alt. 690 feet), entering the Jordan about three miles below Tell es Sidreh, with the name of Sh'ab el Ghoraniyel}. About two miles and a half on the south-west of this confluence, the hills on the left bank of Wady Far'ah terminate in el Makhruk. The Wady Far'ah which has entered the Ghor from the north-west, now takes the name of Wady el Jozelelj, and bends round to the south, meandering in that Direction for six miles through the Ghor, to its junction with the Jordan ; its distance from the Jordan being only about three-quarters of a mile, nearly all the way. The watersheds here between the Far'ah and the Jordan, being thus contracted, leave no room for any other secondary features than mere corrosions in the face of the descent from the Ghor to the Zor. The latter is here remarkable for the remains of the Jisr (Bridge) ed Damieh,