270 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vu 



which the freshwater mere of Palestine reached 

 its highest level is extremely remote; that its 

 diminution has taken place very slowly, and with 

 periods of rest, during which the first formed 

 deposits were cut down into terraces. This con- 

 clusion is strikingly borne out by other facts. A 

 volcanic region stretches from Galilee to Gilead 

 and the Hauran, on each side of the northern end 

 of the valley. Some of the streams of basaltic 

 lava which have been thrown out from its craters 

 and clefts in times of which history has no record, 

 have run athwart the course of the Jordan itself, 

 or of that of some of its tributary streams. The 

 lava streams, therefore, must be of later date than 

 the depressions they fill. And yet, where they 

 have thus temporarily dammed the Jordan and 

 the Jermuk, these streams have had time to cut 

 through the hard basalts and lay bare the beds, 

 over which, before the lava streams invaded them, 

 they flowed. 



In fact, the antiquity of the present Jftrdan- 

 Arabah valley, as a hollow in a tableland, out of 

 reach of the sea, and troubled by no diluvial or 

 other disturbances, beyond the volcanic eruptions 

 of Gilead and of Galilee, is vast, even as estimated 

 by a geological standard. No marine deposits 

 of later than miocene age occur in or about it; 

 and there is every reason to believe that the Syro- 

 Arabian plateau has been dry land, throughout 

 the pliocene and later epochs, down to the present 



