'A handbook of Syria (including Palestine). London: Naval Staff Intelligence Department, June 1919' [‎219v] (443/738)

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432 JUDAEA AND THE SOUTHERN DESERT
yellowish colour and so porous that it swallows up rain almost
at once. There are, however, a few tracts of flat ground such
as the Buqei‘ plain, east of Mar Saba, about 5 miles long by
2 miles in width, where the soil is of a more marly nature.
As to vegetation, there are no trees except by the rare pools or
rarer springs and occasionally in the bottoms of shady gorges.
Great expanses, especially on the high part, are absolutely
bare of plant life of any kind ; but in the depressions, in
spring, there is much desert flora and patchy grass which,
however, dries up with the first sirocco, leaving only burnt
grass and aromatic plants with few or no leaves. Added to
this the fact that such growth as there is, when cropped,
requires two years to spring anew it will be readily seen that
such a region is exceptionally inhospitable and fitted only for
small nomadic pasturage. The region in fact can only
support a scant population, except perhaps in the rare oases
such as there are around the springs in W. el-Qelt, in the more
productive tract of the Buqei‘, in the district immediately
surrounding the spring of ‘Ain Jidi at the mouth of W. el-
Areijeh, and in W. Umm Bagheq. Cultivation has no
prospects except of a most meagre kind at some of the spots
just mentioned and on the extreme western fringe ; to dig for
ground water is vain. Apart from the tents of the Bedouin
the only habitations of this wilderness are holy places such as
the Russian monastery of St. George clinging to the face of
the cliff on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho and the Greek
monastery of Mar Saba, 10 miles further S.
The Maritime Plain .—The fruitful coast-plain of Judaea and
Samaria begins at the southern frontier near Gaza and ex
tends northward, a uniform but gradually narrowing tract of
land, as far as the promontory of Carmel. The Judaean section
varies in width, from 30 miles in the extreme south to 20 miles
at Ascalon, and is divided, in name as well as in character, into
two parts at about the lat. of this place, the southern half
being known as the Plain of Philistia and that to the north
as the Plain of Sharon. Only the southern part of the Plain
of Sharon, however, lies within the confines of Judaea.