These strata attain a
considerable thickness; and they indicate that the epoch at
which the freshwater mere of Palestine reached its highest level
is extremely remote; that its diminution has taken place very
slowly, and with periods of rest, during which the first formed
deposits were cut down into terraces. This conclusion is
strikingly borne out by other facts. A volcanic region stretches
from Galilee to Gilead and the Hauran, on each side of the
northern end of the valley. Some of the streams of basaltic lava
which have been thrown out from its craters and clefts in times
of which history has no record, have run athwart the course of
the Jordan itself, or of that of some of its tributary streams.
The lava streams, therefore, must be of later date than the
depressions they fill. And yet, where they have thus temporarily
dammed the Jordan and the Jermuk, these streams have had time to
cut through the hard basalts and lay bare the beds, over which,
before the lava streams invaded them, they flowed.
In fact, the antiquity of the present Jordan-Arabah valley, as a
hollow in a tableland, out of reach of the sea, and troubled by
no diluvial or other disturbances, beyond the volcanic eruptions
of Gilead and of Galilee, is vast, even as estimated by a
geological standard. No marine deposits of later than miocene
age occur in or about it; and there is every reason to believe
that the Syro-Arabian plateau has been dry land, throughout the
pliocene and later epochs, down to the present time.
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