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mothers with their husbands and babes. They placed carpets 
or mats on the deck on which different families congregated, 
took their meals and slept, the men smoking a good deal. 
On approaching Jaffa what first strikes the eye is the 
bright line of sand along the Philistian and Samarian coasts. 
The sands there, according to the ordnance survey, attain 
a height in some places of 200 feet, or even more. They are 
enormous accumulations of fine sand, advancing inland, driven 
by westerly winds. The ruins of ancient Gaza and Askelon 
are now covered by them. Possibly the sand has been largely 
drifted from Arabia and Africa directly, or under cyclonic 
action, as may be readily understood by anyone who has 
experienced a sand storm in Egypt or Palestine, which I had 
the misfortune of doing on two occasions, first in the neigh- 
bourhood of Cairo and afterwards at Jerusalem. To form an 
idea of the distance which sand is carried, even over the sea, I 
may mention the experience of a friend who was proceeding by 
Royal Mail Steamer from London to Brazil, on engineering 
business. He says that off Cape de Verde, about 200 miles 
more or less from the African Coast, the deck of the ship 
and the rigging were covered one morning with a layer of 
fine red sand, which the officers of the ship considered had 
been blown from the African desert, carried along in the 
upper air, the phenomena does not appear to have been one of 
uncommon occurrence when passing that locality. They 
expressed gratification at getting clear of the desert. Dr Hull 
observes that the soft calcareous sandstone, which, according 
to his section, is shewn to line the shore, and form the sea 
bed along the coast of Western Palestine, affords alone by its 
disintegration sufficient material for these advancing sand 
hills. 
On nearing the shore the backgrounds of mountain and 
highlands of Philistia and Samaria come into view, and here 
before proceeding to describe the geological section it may be 
well to make a few remarks on the mountain range which 
extends about 70 miles, running nearly north and south almost 
midway between the Mediterranean coast on the west and the 
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