Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks,
as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in
present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends
with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62
miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of
the Mediterranean.*

* The exact figures are: the Lake of Hûleh 7 feet above the
Mediterranean; the Lake of Genesareth 68245 feet, and the
Dead Sea 1292 feet below the sea-level; to the south of
the Dead Sea, towards the water-parting of the Akabah, the
ground is over 720 feet higher than the level of the Red
Sea.

[Illustration: 018.jpg THE DEAD SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS OF MOAB, SEEN FKOM
THE HEIGHTS OF ENGEDI]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either
bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000
feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions:
behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and
intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the
Dead Sea--the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***

* The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with
its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the
form Hieromax.