To Dr. Robinson is due the credit of having first ascertained the spot which forms at once the southern limit of the Ghor and the northern limit of the Ara- bah. This boundary is the line of chalk cliff's which sweep across the vallej- at about six miles below the south-west corner of the Dead Sea. They are from 50 to 150 feet in height ; the Ghor ends with the marshy ground at their feet, and level with their tops the Ara- bah begins (Robinson, ii, 494, 498, 501). Thus the cliff's act as a retaining wall or buttress supporting the higher level of the Arabah, and the whole forms what in geological language might be called a " fault" in the floor of the great valley. Through this wall breaks in the embouchure of the great main drain of the Arabah — the Wady el-Jeib — in itself a very large and deep water-course, which collects and transmits to their outlet at this point the torrents which the nu- merous wadys from both sides of the Arabah pour along it in the winter season (Robinson, ii, 497, 500, 507). The farthest point south to which this drainage is known to reach is the southern Wady Ghurundel (Robinson, ii, 508), which debouches from the eastern mountains about 40 miles from Akabah and 60 from the cliff's just spoken of. The Wady el-Jeib also forms the most direct road for penetrating into the valley from the north. On its west bank, and crossed by the road from Wady Musa (Petra) to Hebron, are the springs of Ain el-Weibeh, maintained by Robinson to be Kadesh (lies. ii. 582 ; but see Stanley, p. 94). Of the substructure of the floor of the Arabah very little is known. In his progress southward along the Wady el-Jeib, which is, during part of its course, over 100 feet in depth, Dr. Robinson (ii, 498) notes that the sides are "of chalky earth or marl," but beyond this there is no information. The surface is drearj- and desolate in the extreme. According to Dr. Robinscn
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(ii, 502), " A lone shrub of the ghudah is almost the only trace of vegetation." This was at the ascent from the Wady el-Jeib to the floor of the great valley itself. Farther south, near Ain el- Weibeh, it is a rolling grav- elly desert, with round naked hills of considerable ele- vation (ii,580). At Wady Ghurundel it is "an expanse of shifting sands, broken by innumerable undulations and low hills" (Burckhardt, p. 442), and " counterseeted by a hundred water-courses" (Stanley, p. 87). The southern portion has a considerable general slope from east to west quite apart from the undulations of the surface (Stanley, p. 85), a slope which extends as far north as Petra (Hitter, xiv, 1097). Nor is the heat less terrible than the desolation, and travellers, almost without exception, bear testimony to the difficulties of journeying in a region where the sirocco appears to Mow almost without intermission (Ritter, xiv, 101G ; Burckh. p. 444; Martineau, p. 394 ; Robinson, ii, 505). However, in spite of this heat and desolation, there is a certain amount of vegetation, even in the open Ara- bah, in the dryest parts of the year. Schubert in March found the Artu (Calligonum com.), the Anthia variegata, and the Coloquinta (Ritter, xiv, 1014), also tamarisk-bushes (tarfa) lying thick in a torrent bed (p. 1016); and on Stanley's road " the shrubs at times had almost the appearance of a jungle," though it is true that they were so thin as to disappear when the " waste of sand" was overlooked from an elevation (p. 85 ; and see Robinson, i, 240, 258). See Arabia.
It is not surprising that after the discover}' by Burekhardt in 1812 of the prolongation of the Jordan valley in the Arabah, it should have been assumed that this had in former times formed the outlet for the Jordan to the Red Sea. Lately, however, the levels of the Jordan and the Dead Sea have been taken, im- perfectly, but still with sufficient accuracy to disprove the possibility of such a theory ; and in addition there is the universal testimony of the Arabs that at least half of the district drains northward to the Dead Sea — a testimony fulh' confirmed by all the recorded ob- servations of the conformation of the ground. A se- ries of accurate levels from the Akabah to the Dead Sea, up the Arabah, are necessary before the question can be set at rest, but in the mean time the following may be taken as an approximation to the real state of the case. (See the profiles on Petermann's Map.)
(1.) The waters of the Red Sea and of the Mediter- ranean are very nearly at one leveL See Dead Sea.
(2.) The depression of the surface of the Sea of Galilee is G52 feet, and of the Dead Sea 1316 feet, be- low the level of the Mediterranean, and therefore of the Red Sea. Therefore the waters of the Jordan can never in historical times have flowed into the gulf of Akabah, even if the formation of the ground between the Dead Sea and the gulf would admit of it. But,
(3.) All testimony goes to show that the drainage of the northern portion of the Arabah is toward the Dead Sea, and therefore that the land rises southward from the 1 ttter. Also that the south portion drains to the gulf, and therefore that the land rises northward from the gulf to some point between it and the Dead Sea. The water-shed is said by the Arabs to be a long ridge of hills running across the vallev at two and a half days, or say forty miles, from Akabah (Stanley, p. 85), and it is probable that this is not far wrong. By M. de Bertou it is fixed as opposite the entrance to the Wady Talh, apparently flic sum- spot. — Smith, s. v.