Water of the Dead Sea. 326 



imagination to get the better of his judgment. Thus, having 

 succeeded in swimming a very short distance from the shore, 

 and that only on one occasion, he takes occasion to draw the 

 following description of this extensive lake : — " This sea is a 

 vast cauldron of salt brine, through which masses of bitu- 

 men rise bubbling to the simmering surface." 



No one from this passage could possibly have anticipated 

 that the water of this sea is beautifully clear and cool, and, 

 as appears from Lynch' s narrative, after having navigated 

 it in its length and breadth, quite free from all unpleasant 

 odour or unwholesome miasma. Indeed, it appears that the 

 navigators of the Dead Sea experienced no inconvenience 

 from any exhalation while at a distance from the shore, or 

 even sailing near the shore, when the latter was bold and the 

 water deep. The great body of the sea consists of extremely 

 salt but otherwise very pure water ; and as the salts it con- 

 tains are not volatile but fixed, the superincumbent air is in 

 no way polluted. The water, too, resembling in colour that 

 of the ocean, presents nothing of a forbidding or disgusting 

 nature. The water of the Great Salt Lake, as described by 

 Fremont^ is precisely similar ; and it is when we approach 

 the shores of either of these seas that the purity of their 

 waters or air is lessened, and that only in the comparatively 

 few localities where the shores are low, marshy, and mois- 

 tened with streamlets flowing from sulphureous springs. In 

 all these respects there is a remarkable coincidence between 

 these two inland lakes of salt water, that of America appear- 

 ing to be in every particular a repetition of the Dead Sea, 

 but on a much larger scale. 



It is necessary to remark, that there is not the least doubt 

 as to the source from which either of these seas derives its 

 saline impregnation. The mountain of rock salt at Usdum 

 contains an inexhaustible sup^ply for the Dead Sea, and the 

 Great Salt Lake of America is likewise indebted for its saline 

 ingredients to cliffs of rock salt. 



The belief that nothing living can exist within the bound- 

 aries of the Dead Sea, is so generally spread, and has been 

 countenanced by so many authors of reputation, that it be- 



VOL. LT. NO. ClI. — OCTOBER 1851. Y 



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