About One Hour To
The West Of The Spot Where We Passed The Wale Are The Ruins Of A Small
Castle, Situated On The Summit Of A Lower Ridge Of Mountains; The Arabs
Call It Keraoum Abou El Hossein (Arabic).
In the valley of Wale a large party of Arabs Sherarat was encamped,
Bedouins of the Arabian desert, who resort hither in summer for
pasturage.
They are a tribe of upwards of five thousand tents; but not
having been able to possess themselves of a district fertile in
pasturage, and being hemmed in by the northern Aeneze, the Aeneze of the
Nedjed, the Howeytat, and Beni Szakher, they wander about in misery,
have very few horses, and are not able to feed any flocks of sheep or
goats. They live principally on the Hadj route, towards Maan, and in
summer approach the Belka, pushing northward sometimes as far as
Haouran. They
WADY MODJEB
[p.371] are obliged to content themselves with encamping on spots where
the Beni Szakher and the Aeneze, with whom they always endeavour to live
at peace, do not choose to pasture their cattle. The only wealth of the
Sherarat consists in camels. Their tents are very miserable; both men
and women go almost naked, the former being only covered round the
waist, and the women wearing nothing but a loose shirt hanging in rags
about them. These Arabs are much leaner than the Aeneze, and of a
browner complexion. They have the reputation of being very sly and
enterprising thieves, a title by which they think themselves greatly
honoured.
In four hours and a half, after having ascended the mountain on the S.
side of the Wale, we reached a fine plain on its summit. All the country
to the southward of the Wale, as far as the Wady Modjeb, is comprised
under the appellation of El Koura, a term often applied in Syria to
plains: El Koura is the “Plains of Moab” of the Scripture; the soil is
very sandy, and not fertile. The Haouran black stone, or basalt, if it
may be so called, is again met with here. The river El Wale rises at
about three hours distance to the E. of the spot where we passed it,
near which it takes a winding course to the south until it approaches
the Modjeb, where it again turns westwards. The lower part of the river
changes its name into that of Seyl Heydan (Arabic), which empties itself
into the Modjeb at about two hours distant from the Dead sea, near the
ruined place called Dar el Ryashe (Arabic). The Wale seems to be the
same called Nahaliel in D’Anville’s map, but this name is unknown to the
Arabs; its source is not so far northward as in the map. Between the
Wady Zerka Mayn and the Wale is another small rivulet called Wady el
Djebel (Arabic). At the end of six hours and a half we reached the banks
of the Wady Modjeb, the Arnon of the Scriptures, which divides the
[p.372] province of Belka from that of Kerek, as it formerly divided the
small kingdoms of the Moabites and the Amorites. When at about one
hour’s distance short of the Modjeb I was shewn to the N.E. of us, the
ruins of Diban (Arabic), the ancient Dibon, situated in a low ground of
the Koura.
On the spot where we reached the high banks of the Modjeb are the ruins
of a place called Akeb el Debs (Arabic). We followed, from thence, the
top of the precipice at the foot of which the river flows, in an eastern
direction, for a quarter of an hour, when we reached the ruins of Araayr
(Arabic), the Aroer of the Scriptures, standing on the edge of the
precipice; from hence a foot-path leads down to the river. In the Koura,
about one hour to the west of Araayr, are some hillocks called Keszour
el Besheir (Arabic). The view which the Modjeb presents is very
striking: from the bottom, where the river runs through a narrow stripe
of verdant level about forty yards across, the steep and barren banks
arise to a great height, covered with immense blocks of stone which have
rolled down from the upper strata, so that when viewed from above, the
valley looks like a deep chasm, formed by some tremendous convulsion of
the earth, into which there seems no possibility of descending to the
bottom; the distance from the edge of one precipice to that of the
opposite one, is about two miles in a straight line.
We descended the northern bank of the Wady by a foot-path which winds
among the masses of rock, dismounting on account of the steepness of the
road, as we had been obliged to do in the two former valleys which we
had passed in this day’s march; this is a very dangerous pass, as
robbers often waylay travellers here, concealing themselves behind the
rocks, until their prey is close to them. Upon many large blocks by the
side of the path I saw heaps of small stones, placed there as a sort of
weapon for the traveller,
[p.373] in case of need. No Arab passes without adding a few stones to
these heaps. There are three fords across the Modjeb, of which we took
that most frequented. I had never felt such suffocating heat as I
experienced in this valley, from the concentrated rays of the sun and
their reflection from the rocks. We were thirty-five minutes in reaching
the bottom. About twelve minutes above the river I saw on the road side
a heap of fragments of columns, which had been about eight feet in
height. A bridge has been thrown across the stream in this place, of one
high arch, and well built; but it is now no longer of any use, though
evidently of modern date. At a short distance from the bridge are the
ruins of a mill.
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