n was occupied by the waters of the ocean. The mountains of
Sinai were islands in this ocean, which had a very wide range over parts
of Asia, Africa, and Europe. But at the commencement of the succeeding
Miocene stage the crust was subjected to lateral contraction, owing to
which the ocean bed was upraised. The strata were flexured, folded, and
often faulted and fissured along lines ranging north and south, the
great fault of the Jordan-Arabah valley being the most important. At
this period the mountains of the Lebanon, the table-lands of Judaea and
of Arabia, formed of limestone, previously constituting the bed of the
ocean during the Eocene and Cretaceous periods, were converted into land
surfaces. Along with this upheaval of the sea-bed there was extensive
denudation and erosion of the strata, so that valleys were eroded over
the subaerial tracts, and the Jordan-Arabah valley received its primary
form and outline.

Up to this time there does not appear to have been any outbreak of
volcanic forces; but with the succeeding Pliocene period these came into
play, and eruptions of basaltic lava took place along rents and fissures
in the strata, while craters and cones of slag, scoriae, and ashes were
thrown up over the region lying to the east of the Sea of Galilee and
the sources of the Jordan on the one hand, and the central parts of the
great Arabian Desert on the other. These eruptions, probably
intermittent, continued into the succeeding Glacial or Pluvial period,
and only died out about the time that the earliest inhabitants appeared
on the scene.

(_c._) _The Jaulan and Hauran._--This tract is bounded by the valley of
the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee on the west, from which it rises by
steep and rocky declivities into an elevated table-land, drained by the
Yarmuk (Hieromax), the Nahr er Rukkad, and other streams, which flow
westwards into the Jordan along deep channels in which the basaltic
sheets and underlying limestone strata are well laid open to view.

On consideration it seems improbable that the great sheets of augitic
lava, such as cover the surface of the land of Bashan, are altogether
the product of the volcanic mountains which appear to be confined to
special districts in this wide area. Some of the craters do indeed send
forth visible lava-streams, but they are insignificant as compared with
the general mass of the plateau-basalts; and the crater-cones themselves
appear in some cases to be posterior t