and a little less than eight at the north and south ends. The line of coast on the east and west is somewhat serpentine, but there are no bold or far-projecting promontories, except the peninsula at the south end. At each point where the several principal gorges reach the sea, the torrent, during the rainy season, has brought down much débris, and spread it along the beach in a low projecting bar, sufficient to alter the line of the coast, and form what the Arabs call a ras or promontory. This is particularly the case at the entrance of the Kidron on the west, and the Wady Zerka Main, the Callirhoe or Warm Springs of Josephus, and the Wady Mojeb, or Arnon of Scripture, on the east. At the mouths of these ravines, and wherever sweet water moistens the cliffs or shore, there is vegetation luxuriant in proportion to the abundance of the water. At Ain Gidy, about midway of the western coast, there is an abundance of sweet water, and a luxuriant vegetation, consisting of various kinds of trees, shrubs, canes, and wild flowers. They adorn the path of the water as it comes down the cliff from the copious limestone fountain, four hundred feet above the sea. (Robinson.) On the south-east coast, at the entrance of Wadys Safieh and Kerak, there is a still more abundant vegetation, and some tillage; and also on the eastern coast, at the entrance of Wadys Mojeb (Arnon) and Zerka Main, (Warm Springs,) there are canes, flowers, and shrubs. And in various spots along the shore, where sweet water moistens the beach, there are patches of canes and wild flowers.

The eastern and western shores are bordered with lofty, gloomy, sterile, incinerated mountains, chiefly of limestone, which impend over this Bahr Lût, (or Sea of Lot, as the Arabs call it to this day,) leaving only here and there a little space between their bases and the water. They are more precipitous and lofty on the eastern than on the western shore, and have less beach at their base. To look upon at a little distance, they seem to be a compound of iron slag and ashes. The northern end of the Sea, where the Jordan enters, is bordered chiefly by the Plain of Jericho, and the mountains fall away somewhat to the west and east; while towards the south end the mountains sink down gradually, are more broken, and recede a little to the east and west, thus opening to view the great Wady Arabah, or Sandy Valley, which extends southward to the Red Sea. At the south-west corner of the Sea stands a remarkable subordinate ridge of salt, about one hundred feet high, which the Arabs still call Hajr Usdum, or Stone of Sodom. It was on this salt mountain Commander Lynch discovered the remarkable pillar of salt, which, by some means or other, yet without any authority on his

part, he has been supposed to affirm was Lot's wife. His account of it is this:

"At 9, the water shoaling, hauled more off shore. Soon after, to our astonishment, we saw on the eastern side of Usdum, one-third the distance from its north extreme, a lofty round pillar, standing apparently detached from the general mass, at the head of a deep, narrow, and abrupt chasm. We immediately pulled in for the shore, and Dr. Anderson and I went up and examined it. The beach was a soft, slimy mud, incrusted with salt, and, a short distance from the water, covered with saline fragments and flakes of bitumen. We found the pillar to be of solid salt, capped with carbonate of lime, cylindrical in front and pyramidal behind. The upper or rounded part is about forty feet high, resting on a kind of oval pedestal, from forty to sixty feet above the level of the sea. It slightly decreases in size upwards, crumbles at the top, and is one entire mass of crystallization. A prop, or buttress, connects it with the mountain behind, and the whole is covered with débris of a light stone colour. Its peculiar shape is doubtless attributable to the action of the winter rains.

"At 10.10, returned to the boat with large specimens. The shore was soft and very yielding for a great distance; the boats could not get within two hundred yards of the beach, and our foot-prints made on landing, were, when we returned, incrusted with salt."-Pp. 307, 308.

The southern coast is low and marshy, rising very gradually southward into the mouth of Wady Arabah, and terminating against a lofty precipitous chalk bluff, from six to ten miles distant. The consequence is, that the water-line varies here from one to three miles, as the sea is full or low. The marshes are almost inaccessible, being composed of salt, bitumen, marl, and the most intensely bitter salt water, thickened with slime, and every dry thing incrusted with salt; and this horrible compound at a very high temperature. It is bordered to the south, under the chalk bluffs, by a thicket of canes and shrubs. Farther to the east, where Wady Safieh comes down from the mountains of Moab, there is sweet water, and cultivation not far from the sea. About ten miles north of the southern coast, and attached to the eastern shore, is a remarkable peninsula, formed by the upheaving of a desolate precipitous chalk-hill, extending northward some six miles, with a bay lying between its northern portion and the eastern shore. The peninsula extends westward to within two and a half miles of the western coast, and thus cuts off the southern end of the sea in the form of a bay, which is very shallow, being (April 20th) at no place more than two fathoms deep.-(See Chart on the following page.)

The depth of the sea, and the conformation and quality of its bottom, are matters of great interest, as they are peculiar, and tend to throw light on the Scripture history. The narrative is illustrated by a fine map on a large scale, having all the soundings marked.

The accompanying map is sketched from the author's, but has not all the soundings and places, nor the mountains. The Expedition spent twenty-two days on this gloomy and pestiferous sea, encountering its deleterious siroccos, inhalZain ing its fetid exhalations, sweltering under its burning sun, and often covered with a greasy, bitter salt, deposited from the mist or the spray in which they were often enveloped; and their conclusion is as follows:

Callsrrhoe

Grove of Palma

WelMajab

Rivarnen

:

"The inference from the Bible, that this entire chasm was a plain sunk and overwhelmed' by the wrath of God, seems to be sustained by the extraordinary character of our soundings. The bottom of this sea consists of two submerged plains, an elevated and a depressed one; the first averag ing thirteen, and the last about thirteen hundred feet below the surface. Through the northern, the largest and deepest one, in a line corresponding with the bed of the Jordan, is a ravine, which again seems to correspond with the Wady el Jeib, or ravine within a ravine, at the south end of the

sion; preceded, most probably, by an eruption of fire, and a general conflagration of the bitumen which abounded in the plain. I shall ever regret that we were not authorized to explore the southern Ghor to the Red Sea.* "But it is for the learned to comment on the facts we have laboriously collected. Upon ourselves, the result is a decided one. We entered upon this sea with conflicting opinions. One of the party was skeptical, and another, I think, a professed unbeliever of the Mosaic account. After twenty-two days' close investigation, if I am not mistaken, we are unanimous in the conviction of the truth of the Scriptural account of the destruction of the cities of the plain. I record with diffidence the conclusions we have reached, simply as a protest against the shallow deductions of would-be unbelievers."-Pp. 379, 380.

The deep ravine lying in the bottom of the northern portion of the sea, seems to be the bed of the Jordan extended southward, and violently depressed some thirteen hundred feet. It has very precipitous banks, as the soundings show. Take the line sounded across the middle, from Ain Gidy to Wady Mojeb. The first line, after leaving the western shore, gave thirty fathoms; the second, seventythree; the third, one hundred and twenty-seven; the fourth, one hundred and forty-five; and two-thirds across the sea, one hundred and eighty-eight fathoms. The increase of depth on the eastern shore was still more striking. The first sounding off Wady Mojeb was thirty-four fathoms; and, within one or two hundred yards, the second sounding was one hundred and forty-one, and the third one hundred and seventy-one. From this line of soundings the depth increases gradually northward, nearer the eastern than the western shore, until, at the distance of about eight miles, it reaches two hundred and eighteen fathoms. This is the deepest sounding noted on the chart, and is a little to the south of the mouth of the Kidron, and nearer to the eastern than the western shore. Here then, a little less than one-third of the length of the sea, or about ten miles below the mouth of the Jordan, the Expedition found the bottom of that deep caldron in which lies and simmers, over the deeper volcanic fires, the sea of God's indignation against Sodom and Gomorrah. Advancing northward towards the mouth of the Jordan, the depth gradually decreases to within two or three miles of the mouth, where the deepest sounding was one hundred and sixteen fathoms. From this point northward, the depth decreases gradually to one or two fathoms, owing to the mud brought down by the river. Throughout this northern portion, and indeed everywhere except in the southern bay,

* There is a similar break-down in the great valley which lies south of the Dead Sea. About ten miles from its southern shore a high range of perpendicular chalk cliffs extends across the Arabah from west to east, through which Wady el Jeib breaks down, and is the water-drain for the Arabah from far to the south, where it descends through the cliffs. Its sides are nearly perpendicular, and from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet in height.—Robinson's Res., vol. ïí., pp. 495, 498.

the plummet occasionally brought up crystals of salt-occasionally blue and yellow mud.

Returning to the line sounded from Ain Gidy to Mojeb, or the Arnon, and advancing southward towards the peninsula, the soundings gave less and less water, so that from one hundred and eightyeight fathoms, in a distance of five miles, they found one hundred and twenty; and two miles farther, which brought them up with the northern end of the peninsula, they found fifty fathoms. Here, evidently, is the line that divides the two "submerged plains." Here the plummet came up out of the northern and deeper plain, and began to sound the southern or shallower one. From this point the depth decreases rapidly southward. Between the western shore and the peninsula it decreases, in a distance of six miles, from fifty to three fathoms; and from the southern point of the peninsula to the southern extremity of the sea, the depth nowhere (April 25th) exceeded two and a half fathoms; and at the extreme south, the water covering a large space was from one to one and a half feet deep, being nothing more than the seething mixture of slime, bitumen, marl, and bitter water, mentioned above. Beyond the water-line southward, they found the broad level shore to be composed of salt, marl, bitumen, and slime, into which they sank up to their knees, and which scorched them like "hot ashes."

It is generally thought by the learned and scientific that the Cities of the Plain occupied the southern portion of the sea; and we know that they occupied a valley watered and fertilized by the sweet floods of the Jordan. It would seem probable, therefore, that this river then flowed southward, through the valley of the Arabah, to the Red Sea. The catastrophe which overwhelmed these cities was evidently accompanied by violent volcanic action and conflagration, which have left their impress on every part of this gloomy and guilty region, as any geologist will easily see. The probability therefore is, that the whole area now occupied by the sea was sunk down, as we now find it, into a deep and hot chasm, into which the waters of the Jordan flow from the north, and the rain-floods of the Arabah and the adjacent countries flow from the south, through Wady el Jeib. Thus the Arabah has become arid for the want of the fertilizing waters of the Jordan, and the land of Job a desert.*

Having finished the exploration of the Dead Sea, Commander Lynch prepared, on the 30th of April, to visit Kerak, the “Kir Moab" (or capital of Moab) of Scripture. It is situated high up in the mountains, some ten miles distant from the south-east coast The waters of the sea pass off by rapid evaporation, caused by the intense heat of its peculiar climate.