﻿On the Valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. 13 



tually. I lay upon the surface with both feet and both hands in 

 the air. I walked out into the lake, sinking only to the neck. 

 In a horizontal position it was impossible to sink or to force one's 

 self down. One of our party plunged in with his eyes open ; but 

 emerged immediately with a scream, his eye-balls glowing like 

 coals of fire, smarting and watering for hours afterwards. On 

 coming out a pricking sensation was felt upon the skin; small 

 globules of oil, like naphtha, stood over us ; while our heads and 

 beards immediately whitened in the sun, covered by minute crys- 

 tallizations of salt. 



I shall here close my remarks upon the Dead Sea, and shall 

 finish this paper with 



5. Some observations upon the changes which the whole sur- 

 face of Eastern Palestine has undergone and is now undergoing. 



The phenomena already described might be made the basis for 

 wide and interesting speculations ; I shall however limit myself 

 to the suggestion of only a few. The connection of the preced- 

 ing facts with the various theories respecting the existence of the 

 Dead Sea previous to the destruction of the cities of the plain, and 

 with the manner of their destruction, is manifest. The Dead Sea, 

 which is supposed to cover those cities, is a continuation of the 

 Jordan valley — a valley as we have seen stretching ten miles south 

 of the southern end of that sea, where a line of cliffs makes an 

 abrupt offset to the valley (El Arabah) coming down from the 

 south. This is according to Dr. Robinson's late discoveries ;* 

 as it was formerly supposed that the Jordan valley prolonged itself 

 to the eastern arm of the Red Sea — that the Jordan River issuing 

 from the southern end of the Dead Sea, intersected that valley 

 throughout its whole extent — that the destruction of Sodom and 

 Gomorrah, 1898 B. C. broke up the plain — that the waters settled 

 into a lake, the present Dead Sea, and consequently, that all the 

 phenomena there observed, must be explained in accordance with 

 these hypotheses. But the break in the valley of the Jordan, and 

 the fact that the Jordan does not issue from the Dead Sea, but 

 on the contrary that the stream south of that sea runs northward 

 into it, show that there has not been, since a very remote era at 

 least, any connection between the waters of the Dead and Red 

 Seas, and that the whole Jordan valley has undergone an organic 

 change, an entire depression. 



* See Vols. II and III, passim. 





