102 A SEA OF TERROR. 



of the two Neptunian and Plutonian principles, which, during the 

 geological eras, contended for the empire of the world. One might 

 say that here the two antagonistic forces exhausted themselves, that 

 they have equally lost their potency ; so much so, that at the close 

 of the combat all has sunk into the silence and immobility of death. 

 And who knows if the volcanic crater, whose absence at first 

 astonishes the observer, is not the Dead Sea itself? Is it unreason- 

 able to admit that after the upheaval of the mountains which inclose 

 it, and which a terrible explosion of subterranean fire will have sepa- 

 rated, the neighbouring waters were precipitated into and swallowed 

 up in the yawning gulf which they still fill to-day ? . . . This hypo- 

 thesis is so much the more probable, because in this fire-scathed 

 region the lake affords manifest indications of an igneous travail even 

 now accomplishing itself sullenly in the bowels of the globe. We 

 know that its name of Lake Asphaltites is due to the semi-fluid 

 bituminous matter which constantly rises to its surface and accumu- 

 lates on its shores. With the vapours exhaled by this bitumen under 

 the influence of heat, mingle sulphurous and amrnoniacal exhalations, 

 which render the atmosphere of the Dead Sea dangerous to breathe."* 

 Before 1835 no one had ventured upon its waters. An Irish 

 traveller, named Cottingham, was their first navigator ; but after a 

 five days' voyage he returned to Jerusalem, and died of exhaustion. 

 Two years later Messrs. Moore and Beke made a new attempt. For 

 several days they withstood the pestilential exhalations of the lake, 

 and succeeded in proving the deep depression of its basin ; but at 

 length, both of them being taken ill, they were compelled to cut 

 short their explorations. In 1847 the enterprise was undertaken by 

 a Frenchman Lieutenant Molyneux who sounded it in many 

 places, but was speedily carried off by fever. The following year 

 Lieutenant Lynch, of the American navy, embarked on the lake in 

 iron boats, with competent crews. He navigated its waters for 

 three weeks ; but all who composed the expedition were more or less 

 Beverely attacked,- and one of them, Lieutenant Deane, succumbed. 

 * Laorty-Hadji, " La Syrie, la Palestine, et la Juclee." 



