In 1877 the Survey, which had been interrupted by an attack on the party, at Safed, was resumed by Lieutenant Kitchener, who had been Conder’s chief helper, and was completed satisfactorily.
In 1880 the great map of Western Palestine was published; and in 1881 Conder commenced the Survey of Eastern Palestine, which, however, the Turks did not allow to be completed.
A geological expedition left England in October 1883, under Professor Edward Hull, F.R.S., Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland. Lieutenant-Colonel Kitchener, who accompanied him, surveyed the Wady Arabah.
In 1885 and later years, extensive tracts of country have been surveyed by Herr Schumacher, especially in the Jaulan.
Following upon these various explorations, the Society has poured out an incessant stream of publications, maps, and photographs, and its officers have published important books on their own account.
2. Physical Features of Palestine.
“The main object of the Survey of Palestine may be said to have been to collect materials in illustration of the Bible. Few stronger confirmations of the historic and authentic character of the sacred volume can be imagined than that furnished by a comparison of the ‘Land and the Book,’ which shows clearly that they tally in every respect. Mistaken ideas and preconceived notions may be corrected; but the truth of the Bible is certainly established on a firm basis, by the criticisms of those who, familiar with the people and the country, are able to read it, not as a dead record of a former world or of an extinct race, but as a living picture of manners and of a land which can still be studied by any who will devote themselves to the task.”—Major Conder.
Let us begin our present study of the Holy Land by 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 remarked by Mr Ffoulkes, it is a river that has never been navigable, flowing into a sea that has never known a port—has never been a highway to more hospitable coasts—has never possessed a fishery—a river that has never boasted of a single town of eminence upon its banks.
MERIDIONAL SECTION, WESTERN PALESTINE.