'A handbook of Syria (including Palestine). London: Naval Staff Intelligence Department, June 1919' [‎218v] (441/738)

430 JUDAEA AND THE SOUTHERN DESERT
or more within a distance never exceeding 20 miles. From
the frowning promontory of Qarn Sartabeh just outside the
northern border of Judaea, the eastern escarpment runs
southward like a mountain wall and extends along the Dead
Sea and beyond. This wall rises 1,000-1,500 ft. almost
directly above the Gh5r and is everywhere steep and often
precipitous and inaccessible and is cleft to the base at short
intervals by deep and narrow valleys and gorges that issue
from the mountains. The principal of these, commencing
on the north, are : W. el-‘Aujeh, with branch wadis Suweinit
and Farah (not to be confounded with W. Far‘ah just N.
in Samaria); W. el-Qelt, down the steep lower course of which
runs the old road from Jerusalem to Jericho; W. en-Nar
(Kidron valley), rising near Jerusalem ; W. ed-Darajeh, with
its heads on the watershed just S. of Bethlehem; W. el-Ghar,
known in its lower course as W. el-‘Areijeh; W. el-Khudheireh;
W. es-Seyyal; W. Umm Bagheq ; W. Zuweireh ; and W. Ma-
hawat. The Qelt, Nar, Darajeh and Ghar gorges in particular
are so strikingly deep in comparison with their width and so
precipitous of side, especially towards their lower courses, that
they are uncrossable except at a few points, and their beds
are so choked with boulders as to be impassable. Their
upper courses or heads spread out fan-like into a perfect
labyrinth of shallower valleys.
The general character of the Judaean plateau is thus de
scribed by G. Adam Smith. ‘ The greater part consists of stony
moorland, upon which rough scrub and thorns, reinforced by
a few dwarf oaks, contend with multitudes of boulders, and
the limestone, as if impatient of the thin pretence of soil,
breaks out in bare scalps and prominences. There are some
patches of cultivation, but though the grain springs gaily
from them, they seem more beds of shingle than of soil.
The only other signs of life, besides the wild bee and a few
birds, are flocks of sheep and goats, or a few cattle, cropping
far apart in melancholy proof of the scantiness of the herbage.
Where the plateau rolls, the shadeless slopes are for the most
part divided between brown scrub and grey rock; the