Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/201

Rh morning we left Jericho on our return journey by Nebi Mûsa and Mar Saba. For several miles after again crossing the Kelt, our way ran along the base of the escarpments of limestone which form the western margin of the Jordan Valley. The beds of limestone are here largely interstratified with dark chert, and are often contorted; but the general dip is westwards, from the plain into the hillside. An excellent section of the strata is shown in the W. Jorif Guzel, three miles south of the Kelt. After passing this, we struck up the deep gorge of the W. el Kueiserah. This valley introduces us into a country of smooth chalky downs, traversed by deep ravines, sometimes covered with grass, but generally bare and white. Here amongst the beds of limestone occur others, consisting of dark shales and bituminous limestone, which, as it is compact and takes a good polish, is manufactured into vases, cups, dishes, and ornaments by the artizans of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

The Cities of the Plain.—If any of our friends expected that we should discover the ruins of Sodom or Gomorrah, they will be disappointed. I might add that we also failed to discover Pharaoh's chariots in the Red Sea! Both were equally probable, or impossible. As Captain Conder has well observed, it ought not to have been expected that ruins of such antiquity would remain to the present day; and the remarks which I have hazarded regarding the rapid disintegration of the native rocks apply with even greater force to ruined walls of an antiquity of nearly four thousand years. From the description in the Bible, I have always felt satisfied that these cities lay in some part of the fertile plain of the Jordan to the north of the Salt Sea, and to the west of that river; and when visiting the ruins of Jericho, and beholding the copious springs and streams of that spot, and how applicable to it would be the expression "that it was well watered everywhere," the thought occurred. May not the more modern city (ancient Jericho) have arisen from the ruins of the Cities of the Plain? A period of over four hundred years intervenes between