Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/134

100 such as gravel; at other times they consisted of fine sand, loam, or white marl, with very even stratification, and contained blanched semi-fossil shells of at least two kinds of univalves, which Professor Haddon has kindly determined for me to be Melania tuberculata, Müll, and Melanopsis Saulcyi, Bourg. (Fig. 12).

From the position of these strata it was clear that they occupy the bed of a wide depression, gradually narrowing southwards, but opening northwards in the direction of the great basin of the Salt Sea. In that direction there was no solid barrier by which they could have been banked up so as to form lake deposits isolated from those bordering The Ghôr itself. That they were deposits of an ancient lake was to me perfectly clear; but was I to suppose that they had been deposited under the waters of the Salt Sea when they stood at the level of these terraces of marl, silt, and gravel? This was a question of so startling a kind that I hesitated for some time to reply to it, though my aneroid marked 29.9 inches—almost exactly that of the shore of the Gulf of Akabah! We were therefore (approximately) at the level of this gulf and of the Mediterranean, or nearly 1,300 feet above the waters of the Salt Sea itself. If therefore these deposits were those of the ancient sea-bed, its waters must have been at least 1,300 feet higher than at present. I reserved my assent to so startling a conclusion; but before I left the district no shadow of doubt remained on my mind that this had indeed been the case.

During the three following days we were frequently within view of a remarkable ridge, called Samrat Fiddan, rising to an elevation of 844 feet