Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

cH.xxiii.] Physical Features of the Desert. 163
a sandy loam covering the substratum of clialk or
con2;lomerate.
Roughly speaking, tlie district is without mountains,
streams or fresh-water lakes, for the two
great rivers which cross its north-eastern angle
neither affect nor are affected by the country they
traverse. They cut through the plain, as it were,
like stran«jers, and have nothinof in common with
the desert above them. The only considerable
chain of hills is
that which connects Damascus with
Mosul, and which, under the successive names of
Jebel Ruak, Jebel Amur, Jebel Abd ul Aziz, and
Jebel Sinjcir, forms a continuous line at right
angles to the Euphrates. This line marks the
difference of level in the plains north and south of
it, with a corresponding diversity of vegetation.
Above the hills, permanent sheep pasture is found
below them, camel pasture only.
It is strange that modern map-makers, and especially
the German, should in their anxiety to
improve on ancient models have abandoned so
marked a natural feature as this range of hills,
which the older geographers w^ere careful to give ;
and it is a poor exchange to find in its stead, the
old blank spaces of the desert filled up with new
landmarks either wholly imaginary or out of all
proportion to their real value. There is nothing
more irritating to the traveller, endeavouring to
make his way across the desert by the help of one
of these German maps, than to find a number of
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