Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/265

Rh of a town. I could see no extensive remains of buildings such as are found in ancient sites in Palestine.

The wall ran nearly north and south, and at the southern end there are the remains of what was probably a tower; traces of the wall can then lie seen following the hillside for a considerable distance, and enclosing the hill. The nawâmîs are not all inside the wall, and appear to me to be of more recent construction. An apparently old roadway leads through the ruins, and crossing a saddle of the hills leads up to the high hills on the east.

The remains appear to me to be those of a very ancient site, subsequently used by the Arabs as a camping ground. I could find out nothing from the Arabs about these remains, though they are well known.

The view from here overt he gorge of Es Safieh to the north is very fine; the various and brilliant colours of the rocks are most marked; cliffs of a bright rose colour line the stream, alternating with yellow, dark red, and purple.

The ruins in the Ghôr es Safieh appear to be all modern; there is a large reservoir and several ruined mills, all of Arab construction.

A track across the mud flats leads to the base of Jebel Usdum, the mountain of salt, on the western side of the valley. I found that this mountain had to be considerably altered in shape and position to what it has been shown on existing maps. It is almost detached from the surrounding hills, and descends abruptly in cliffs to the Dead Sea shore. It reaches a height of (300 feet above the Dead Sea, and is broken and cracked by many fissures. All round the ghôr there is a border of the same marly hills, more or less washed away, and extending for some distance up the valleys.

On the 27th December we passed round the Jebel Usdum by the seashore and followed a road leading up the Wddy Zuweirah. The road leads up a winding ravine in the bare limestone hills that extend all along the west side of the Dead Sea.

A picturesque Saracenic castle, now in ruins, is perched on an isolated hill in the centre of the valley, defending the pass from an enemy advancing from the east.

An ingenious loophole has been cut in the rocks on the opposite side of the valley in advance of the castle, from which the valley is entirely commanded.

After the castle the road ascends steeply by zigzags to a pass, after