Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/99

fixing in our minds a clear notion of its general physiography. Two ranges of hills, running from north to south, one on either side of the river Jordan, stand out as a principal feature of the country. The western range is between 2000 and 3000 feet high, and the eastern range about 1000 feet higher. The Jordan, gathering its waters from three sources, but chiefly from a spring issuing from a cave at Banias, at the base of the Anti-Lebanon, about 1000 feet above the ocean level, descends rapidly, and at a distance of 12 miles passes through the marshy swamp called Lake Huleh, generally identified with the Scriptural Waters of Merom. "Lake Huleh" is 4 miles long, and is very nearly at the same level with the Mediterranean. The Jordan was not known to pass through this swamp as an actual stream until Mr J. Macgregor, in his Rob Roy canoe, navigated his way through the reeds. Descending with the stream ("Jordan" means the Descender), we come, at a further distance of 10½ miles, to the Lake of Galilee, and here we are 682 feet below the Mediterranean. The lake is 12½ miles long, and nearly 8 miles wide at its broadest part. Between the Lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea the distance, as the crow flies, is 65 miles; but the stream is so tortuous that Lieutenant Lynch found it, in navigation, to be 200 miles. In the course of this distance Lynch passed down twenty-seven rapids which he considered "threatening," besides a great many more of lesser magnitude. The Dead Sea itself is 1292 feet below the Mediterranean, though the level varies by a few feet according as Jordan overflows or runs low. Its length is 47 miles and its breadth about 10 miles. It has no outlet to the south, but gets rid, by evaporation from the surface, of all the water poured into it. Thus the Jordan occupies a gorge which is deep as well as wide, and is, together with its lake basins, the most remarkable depression of the kind on the face of the earth. As