Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/107

 Limestone formations, which occupy the greater part of the map, forming the great table-land of the Tih, from its western escarpment to the borders of the Arabah Valley, and stretching northward throughout the hill country of Judea and Samaria into Syria and the Lebanon.

On the east of the Jordan Valley the Cretaceous Limestone forms the table-lands of Edom and Moab: as far north as the Hauran and Jaulan, where the limestone passes below great sheets of basaltic lava. The Cretaceous Limestone represents the Chalk formation of Europe and the British Isles.

Although the Cretaceous Limestone belongs to the Secondary period, and the Nummulitic Limestone to the Tertiary, they are very closely connected in Palestine, as far as their mineral characters are concerned; and they both contain beds or bands of flint and chert.

GENERALISED GEOLOGICAL SECTION ACROSS PALESTINE.

o, Level of the Mediterranean: a, bed of the maritime plains; m, old lacustrine deposits of the Dead Sea basin; n, deposits now forming beneath the Dead Sea; p, tufaceous deposits of hot springs; h, basalt.

The Cretaceous Limestone underlies nearly the whole of the Jordan and Arabah Valleys, although