Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/188

152 were very kindly received by the friends of the Palestine Survey in Jerusalem, including H.B.M. Consul, Mr. Noel T. Moore; the American Consul, Dr. Selah Merrill, Dr. Chaplin, Dr. Sandreczky, the Rev. A. H. Kelk, and Mr. Schick. Preparations were set on foot for a visit to Bethlehem and the Pools of Solomon, the Jordan Valley, and Jericho. Meanwhile we examined the quarries and rock-exposures in the vicinity of the Holy City.

The geological structure of the district is sufficiently simple to be explained within a short compass. Jerusalem itself is built on a platform of nearly horizontal strata of limestone, bounded in every direction except the north by deep valleys, along which the beds occasionally crop out in gently sloping courses. The valley along which the plateau terminates on the east is the Wâdy Sitti Mariana, or Valley of Jehoshaphat; that on the west is the Wâdy Rahâbi, or Valley of Hinnom, and these two unite to form the Wâdy-en-Nâr, or the Valley of the Kedron, which follows a somewhat irregular course towards the south and east till it enters the Salt Sea south of Râs Feshkah. The Valley of Jehoshaphat is 204 feet in depth under the Mosque of Omar, and is bounded on the east by the Mount of Olives, which at Kefr-el-Tûr reaches an elevation of 2,683 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. The hills to the outside of the valleys are somewhat higher than the Jerusalem platform, and thus, as has been often remarked, bear out the beautiful simile of Psalm cxxv, 2. They are composed of similar calcareous strata, and have a slight dip towards the south in the direction of the general drainage of the country. The valleys are therefore due to erosion facilitated by the solvent action of water containing carbonic acid gas; the present streams, however, are only periodical and intermittent; and it is probable that the remarkably deep valleys of the table-land of Palestine, as well as the