OF SEVERAL PARTS OF WESTERN ASIA. 377 



the cities of the plain, according to the scriptural account, which 

 says, that the Lord rained upon Sodom and npon Gomorrah brim- 

 stone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. It may be, too, that 

 the flames, or rather the burning sulphur, would set on fire large 

 quantities of bitumen, which had accumulated at the fountains, 

 or pits, and thus increase and prolong the conflagration, and pro- 

 duce vast quantities of smoke, so as to make it not strange, that, 

 as Abraham looked towards Sodom next morning, the smoke of 

 the country n'ent up as the smoke of a furnace. Indeed, one is 

 reminded, by this description, of the account Kircher has left us 

 of the destruction of Euphemia, by a similar agency. " After 

 some time," says he, " the violent paroxysm (of the earthquake) 

 "ceasing, I stood up, and turning my eyes, to look for Euphemia, 

 saw only a frightful black cloud. We waited till it had passed 

 away, when nothing but a dismal and putrid lake was to be seen, 

 where the city once stood." The sinking down of the land and 

 the rushing in of the waters, frequenfly does not take place tiU 

 towards the close of the earthquake, so that, in this case, there 

 might have been time for the fire to consume the cities before the 

 water overflowed them. It is also not at all improbable, that the 

 ridge of rock salt, called Usdum, might at the same time have 

 been protruded further than before, so as to become visible. In 

 the earthquake of Cutch, a long elevated mound was thrown up, 

 which the natives called Ulla Bund or the Mound of God. With 

 still more propriety might Usdum receive this appellation. 



I cannot adopt the opinion suggested by Robinson and Smith, 

 Michaelis and Busching, that the combustion of the bitumen 

 was the principal cause of the sinking of the surface below the 

 level of the Dead Sea. For first, it would require a quantity 

 much greater beneath the earth's surface than we have any ex- 

 ample of ; and secondly, if it were beneath the soil, as it must be 

 to render the surface habitable, it would burn but slowly, giving 

 sufficient time for the inhabitants to escape, which does not seem 

 to have been the case. 



8. Eighthly, if these suggestions be admitted, we can easily 

 see how it was, that the plain, on which these cities stood, when 

 Lot chose it for his dwelling-place, and which was well watered 

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