NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 587 



raldi showed the Paris Academy of Sciences fossil fishes found in 

 the Lebanon region ; a little later, Cornelius Bruyn, in the French 

 edition of his Eastern travels, gave well-drawn representations of 

 fossil fishes and shells, some of them from the region of the Dead 

 Sea. About the middle of the century Richard Pococke, Bishop 

 of Meath, and Korte, of Altona, made more statements of the same 

 sort ; and toward the close of the century, as we have seen, Volney 

 gave still more of these researches, with philosophical deductions 

 from them. 



The result of all this was that there gradually dawned upon 

 thinking men the conviction that, for ages before the appearance 

 of man on the planet, and during all the period since his appear- 

 ance, natural laws have been steadily in force, and in Palestine as 

 elsewhere ; this conviction obliged men to consider other than 

 supernatural causes for the phenomena of the Dead Sea, and myth 

 and marvel steadily shrank in value. 



But at the very threshold of the nineteenth century Chateau- 

 briand came into the field, and he seemed to banish the scientific 

 spirit, though what he really did was to conceal it temporarily 

 behind the vapors of his rhetoric. The time was propitious for 

 him. It was the period of reaction after the French Revolution, 

 when what was called religion was again in fashion, and when 

 even atheists supported it as a good thing for common people ; of 

 such an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial information, 

 thin sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained prophet. 

 His enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land ; 

 whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but 

 simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described, 

 and especially over the Dead Sea. The legend of Lot's wife he 

 carefully avoided, for he knew too well the danger of ridicule in 

 France. 



As long as the Napoleonic and Bourbon reigns lasted, and in- 

 deed for some time afterward, this kind of dealing with the Holy 

 Land was fashionable, and we have a long series of men, espe- 

 cially of Frenchmen, who evidently received their impulse from 

 Chateaubriand. 



About 1831 De Geramb, Abbot of La Trappe, evidently a very 

 noble and devout spirit, sees vapor above the Dead Sea, but 

 stretches the truth a little speaking of it as " vapor or smoke." 

 He could not find the salt statue, and complains of the "diversity 

 of stories regarding it." The simple physical cause of this di- 

 versity the washing out of different statues in different years 

 never occurs to him, but he comforts himself with the scriptural 

 warrant for the metamorphosis.* 



* For Mariti, see his " Voyage," etc., vol. ii, pp. 352-356. For Tobler's high opinion of 

 him, see the " Bibliographia," pp. 132, 133. For Volney, see his "Voyage en Syrie et 



