Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/141

Rh since leaving Petra amongst ruins of solid masonry, evidently the walls of a reservoir, constructed to receive the waters of the brook during floods. The north and south walls were 70 feet long, those east and west 85 feet in the interior. A little below was a pile of ruined walls, probably those of a dwelling, and beyond on the flat the outlines of extensive fields. Major Kitchener considered these ruins to have belonged to one of the numerous Arab cultivators, who, several hundred years ago, had occupied the district we were now traversing. Here there was evidence of an elaborate system of irrigation, and of a state of rural prosperity which has since disappeared, probably owing to the depredations of the mountain tribes. We were to have opportunities further north of witnessing similar instances where cultivated places had lapsed into a state of nature.

Standing on these ruins, and looking in a north-westerly direction across the valley, here about five miles wide, we beheld the terraces of white marl and silt, originally the bed of the Salt Sea, spread over a wide area, and bounded by the limestone cliffs of the Tîh. Where cut into by river courses, these nearly horizontal strata form a series of tabulated terraces from 20 to 30 feet high (Fig. 14). We left the road in order to examine them, with the hope of finding shells, or some other relics of former aqueous life; but our search was not rewarded with success, notwithstanding the occurrence of the univalves before referred to in the terraces near our camp at Ain Abu Werideh. Our elevation here was about 250 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, or 1,050 feet above that of the Salt Sea, now about 15 miles to the north of our position. Towards evening we camped on a terrace near the edge of the deep ravine, the Wâdy Butachy; looking across which the eye rested with admiration on the grand escarpment of the cretaceous limestone surmounting the red cliffs and terraces of sandstone, which rise along the line of the Wâdy Gharandel, and range northwards along the eastern shores of the Salt Sea.