Pre/. T. G. Bonneij — The Kiahon and Jordan Valleys, 581 



Duhy ; ia the latter some sort of upheaval is admitted. Prof. Lartet, 

 in his excellent memoir, objects to a diflferential uplift in the bed 

 of the Jordan valley on the ground that there is no disturbance 

 of horizontality in the strata exposed in its flanks. But we must 

 remember that as the beds on both sides dip (on the west rather 

 strongly) towards the valley, a slope at right angles, or in its 

 direction, would be masked, especially as this would be small, ^ But 

 according to Professor Lartet's map the strata do dip in the required 

 direction. Both he and Professor Hull represent Nubian sandstone 

 cropping out beneath the Cretaceous limestone very near the Arabah- 

 Akabah watershed. The former runs downwards to the south end 

 of the Dead Sea, and can be traced beneath the great masses of 

 limestone forming the Moab Hills, until it disappears opposite to 

 Jebel Kuruntil.' After a time, according to Professor Hull's map, 

 it again crops out, being seen for the last time nearly due east 

 of Shechem. Thus there must be a considerable bending or 

 displacement parallel with the east and west fault running from 

 near Bethlehem to the Dead Sea, True, this only accounts for about 

 one-third of the amount which the flexure hypothesis requires, but 

 the beds may have been already somewhat bent down when the 

 trough-faulting began. This hypothesis obviously implies that 

 the whole region from the Arabah to the sources of the Jordan has 

 been considerably depressed. The latter, so far as I can ascertain, 

 range from about three to rather over seven hundred feet above sea- 

 level, which would be too low if the drainage had ever reached the 

 Gulf of Akabah, But this and the ' sag ' necessary (as indicated above) 

 to form the Sea of Galilee (in an east and west line with which are the 

 plateau of Asochis and the Bay of Acre ; also the marked escarpment 

 in the hills west of Safed) all suggest a system of faults and flexures 

 almost at riglit angles to, and so probably not coeval with, the 

 north and south system defining the Jordan valley. All geologists 

 agree that before the end of the Pliocene period, " the existing land 

 surfaces on either side of the Jordan-Arabah valley were in a con- 

 dition not very different from that of the present day, at least in 

 their main features." Professor Hull, from whom these words are 

 quoted,^ says " at the close of the Miocene epoch," but I am doubtful 

 whether we can adopt this limit. If, as is very possible, the two 

 greater systems of disturbances, which certainly affected a large 

 part of the Mediterranean area, extended thus far east, the first 

 uplift would occur at the close of the Eocene and the consequent 

 sculpture during the Miocene period ; the formation of the Jordan 

 trough would belong to the second, or immediately post-Miocene 

 movements, by which large parts of the western half of the Alps 

 were so profoundly affected ; and its sculpture would proceed 

 during the Pliocene, the flexure of the trough occurring rather 



* Taking the watershed as 700 feet ahove, and the Dead Sea as 1,300 feet below, 

 sea-level, we get iu round numbers a drop of 2,000 feet in about 70 miles, or on 

 a rough average 1 in 175 — less than a degree. 



- The Mount of Temptation, the supposed scene of the Forty Days' Fast, 

 conspicuous from and to north-west of Jericho. 



3 " Survey of "Western Palestine " (Geology), p. 112. 



