100 STRANGE WILD CHARACTER OF THE SEA. 



lying fully thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean : 

 as the Lake Sir-i-Kol, where the Oxus rises 



" In his high mountain-cradle in Paracre," 



is the most elevated.* " Its basin," to quote Dean Stanley's graphic 

 description, " is a steaming caldron a bowl which, from the pecu- 

 liar temperature and deep cavity in which it is situated, can never be 

 filled to overflowing. The river Jordan, itself exposed to the same 

 withering influences, is not copious enough to furnish a supply equal 

 to the demand made by the rapid evaporation. Its excessive salt- 

 ness is even more remarkable than its deep depression. This pecu- 

 liarity is, it is believed, mainly occasioned by the huge barrier of 

 fossil-salt at its south-west corner, and heightened by the rapid 

 evaporation of the fresh water poured into it. Other like phenomena, 

 though in a less striking form, exist elsewhere. But, without enter- 

 ing into its wider relations, this aspect is important, as that which 

 most forcibly impressed the sacred writers. To them it was ' the 

 salt sea,' and nothing more. They exhibit hardly a trace of the 

 exaggerations of later times. And so it is in fact. It is not gloom, 

 but desolation, which is the prevailing characteristic of the Sea of 

 Death. Follow the course of the Jordan to its end. How different 

 from the first burst of its waters in Mount Hermon, amongst the 

 groves of Dan and Paneas ! How different from the ' riotous prodi- 

 gality of life' which has marked its downward course, almost to the 

 very termination of its existence ! Gradually, within the last mile 

 from the Dead Sea, its verdure dies away, and the river melts into 

 its grave in a tame and sluggish stream ; still, however, of suffi- 

 cient force to carry its brown waters far into the bright green sea. 

 Along the desert shore the white crust of salt indicates the cause of 

 sterility. Thus the few living creatures which the Jordan washes 

 down into the waters of the sea are destroyed. Hence arises the 

 unnatural buoyancy and the intolerable nausea to taste and touch, 



* Lake Sir-i-Kol is 15,600 feet above the sea-level ; that is, nearly as high as Mout 

 Blanc. It is fourteen miles long and one mile broad. 



