[p.42]Near the lower city are groups of olive trees. Pieces of feldspath
of various colours are scattered about in great quantities upon the
chalky rock of this mountain. I found in going up a species of locust
with six very long legs, and a slender body of about four inches in
length. My guide told me that this insect was called [This is the
abbreviation of - [Arabic].] [Arabic] Salli al-nabi, i.e. "pray to the
Prophet."
I descended the mountain in the direction towards the source of the
Jordan, and passed, at the foot of it, the miserable village of Kerwaya.
Behind the mountain of Bostra is another, still higher, called Djebel
Meroura Djoubba. At one hour E. from Kerwaye, in the Houle, is the tomb
of a Turkish Sheikh, with a few houses near it, called Kubbet el Arbai-
in w-el-Ghadjar [Arabic].
The greater part of the fertile plain of the Houle is uncultivated; the
Arabs El Faddel, El Naim, and the Turkmans pasture their cattle here. It
is watered by the river of Hasbeya, the Jordan, and the river of Banias,
besides several rivulets which descend from the mountains on its eastern
side. The source of the Jordan, or as it is here called, Dhan [Arabic],
is at an hour and a quarter N.E. from Banias. It is in the plain, near a
hill called Tel-el-Kadi. There are two springs near each other, one
smaller than the other, whose waters unite immediately below. Both
sources are on level ground, amongst rocks of tufwacke. The larger
source immediately forms a river twelve or fifteen yards across, which
rushes rapidly over a stony bed into the lower plain. There are no ruins
of any kind near the springs; but the hill over them seems to have been
built upon, though nothing now is visible. At a quarter of an hour to
the N. of the spring are ruins of ancient habitations, built of the
black tufwacke, the principal rock found in the plain. The few houses at
present inhabited on that spot are called Enkeil.