British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 408

CHAPTER X.

and other fruit trees are grown, wherever irrigation water is obtainable. In the north-west corner of the plain some underground water is found, but a large quantity is pumped in pipe lines from wells in the Haifa plain. There are a few small springs in the foot-hills to the south-west.

The valley of Jezreel. This, like an eastern arm of the plain of Esdraelon , extends to near the Beisan depression. The flat centre is cultivated with cereal and fodder crops, vegetables, and in some places vines, and there is some good cultivation on the gently sloping northern sides of the valley. Water is not readily obtainable but there are some successful boreholes and one or two springs.

The upper Bira lands. North-east of the plain of Esdraelon is the upper part of the Wadi Bira catchment. This is undulating country composed mostly of basaltic soil. Only small supplies of water are at present available from small springs and from wells of low yield. Grain is the chief crop.

The Battauf plain. This is a lesser known inland plain which is situated between two ranges of hills north of Nazareth. It is generally inundated during the winter rains, but has no natural irrigation water in the summer. Cereals and leguminous crops are the main products.

The Huleh. This is the salient of Palestine depending from the head of the river Jordan. The northern part of this plain is alluvial loam and in the south there is the large marsh and lake of Huleh. The large springs forming the Jordan and many smaller springs around the perimeter distribute water over the plain in a primitive reticulation of streams and irrigation channels.

65. The Jordan valley. Part of the Great Rift which extends from northern Syria to the Gulf of Aqaba across the Red Sea and into Africa, the Jordan valley is slightly above sea level near the northern frontier and, in about 160 kilometres, falls to 1.300 ft. below sea level at the Dead Sea. In the central part 'of the valley, south of Lake Tiberias, for a distance of about forty kilometres the land is fertile and fairly well cultivated, with irrigation water either pumped from the Yarmuk and ,Jordan or flowing from the springs around Beisan , 25 kilometres south of the lake. In the Hirn a area (the plain of J abneel) some successful boreholes have been drilled. Cereals. vegetables, fodder crops, bananas and other fruits are grown in this has altic soil.

The stretch of the Jordan valley on the Palestinian side from the Beisan border southward as far as Wadi Fari'a contains a good deal of "bad land" and is sparsely inhabited. There is some vegetable and cereal cultivation where the Wadi Fari'a de-

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