'Frof. T. O. Bonney — The Kishon and Jordan Valleys. 579 



Avhicli formerly made their ways (the final outlets not being 

 numerous) westwards to the Mediterranean. 



We come next to the great trough-valley. So much has been 

 written about this, which includes the whole course of the Jordan 

 and the major part of both the Leontes and the Orontes, that I need 

 not enter into minute details. Dr. Blanckenhorn's section across 

 southern Palestine ' makes the general structure perfectly clear. 

 The high upland west of the Jordan is formed by a flattened anticline, 

 the eastern arm of which is dropped down by three parallel faults, 

 the outermost practically forming the west side of that valley. 

 A single but greater downthrow does the same on the opposite or 

 eastern side, so the higher strata on both sides of the river are nearly 

 on a level. The western flexure is prolonged, exaggerated, and 

 complicated in the Lebanon range; the eastern in that of Anti- 

 Lebanons, which I suppose to have been the earlier of the two.^ 

 Was the watershed between the Gulf of Akabah and the Dead Sea, 

 with the formation of the latter and the peculiar depression of the 

 major part of the Jordan valley, mainly determined by unequal 

 subsidence of the faulted down trough-blocks, or was this valley, 

 after its first definition, excavated down to the live rock which, 

 though now generally invisible, must form its true floor, and 

 subsequently traversed by flexures, due to forces acting nearly at 

 right angles to the former set, which produced the general depression 

 at the northern end and the marked barrier near the southern? 

 Most authorities adopt the former view. They consider that the 

 limestone, which crops out in ridges near this barrier in the bed 

 of the trough, and the fact that the glens north of it trend towards 

 the Dead Sea and south of it to the Gulf of Akabah, indicate the 

 Arabah-Akabah watershed to have existed from the first. But 

 travellers describe the valley bed as if (apart from the lacustrine 

 deposits) it agreed very closely with the Ghor itself. But we should 

 expect that, if these ridges were the remnants of an ordinary 

 watershed, the united streams from each side of it would have carved 

 in the floor of the trough a pair of narrow ' wadies ' running in 

 opposite directions : in other words, that we should find here 

 a closer resemblance to the valley of the Jordan north of Lake 

 Huleh. As a considerable amount of denudation must have taken 

 place while the Jordan Lake was filling, and must have been 

 continued while it was shrinking (for I suppose the cutting of 

 terminal ravines such as those of the Kedron and the Kelt to be 

 distinctly late features),-^ I am not surprised at the general directions 

 of the larger valleys. 



1 Through Bethlehem; see Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Palest. Vereins, xix (1898), 

 pp. 1-59. 



- To compare smaller with larger mountains, the structure here seems generally 

 similar to that of Switzerland from the French frontier to the watershed between the 

 Rhine and the Inn. 



3 In fact, more than one featiu'e which I observed dm-ing my short visit to 

 Palestine suggested that in the uplands denudation was proceeding very slowly, but 

 became much more rapid in the vicinity of the Jordan. 



