106 ARABIA DESERT A 



It will be seen that it possesses neither chloride of manganese nor 

 chloride of aluminium, no nitrates, and no iodines : that it is, there- 

 fore, not sea water, properly so called, but a mineral water sui 

 generis. 



The enormous proportion of saline matter accounts for its excep- 

 tional density, and justifies the assertion of travellers that a man 

 floats upon its surface like a log of wood ; though we can hardly 

 credit the statement of Pococke that it is impossible to sink to the 

 bottom. Its gravity undoubtedly endows it with extraordinary 

 buoyancy, and to dive to any considerable depth is a matter of diffi- 

 culty ; but in the Dead Sea, as in other seas, man must employ his 

 strength and skill to keep his body afloat. 



CHAPTER II. 



ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETR^A. 



THE traveller who starts from the southern extremity of the Dead 

 Sea encounters a succession of deserts. To the east extend wide 

 plains, covered with ruins, where upwards of thirty cities are to be 

 traced in their decay, like Palmyra, by the trunks of shattered 

 columns and the wrecks of desecrated temples. This is the once 

 nourishing countiy of the Nabatheans, now haunted by some tribes 

 of Idumean Arabs. One might not inappropriately call it the 

 vestibule of Arabia Deserta ; a name applicable to all the central and 

 southern districts that is to say, to nearly three-fourths of the 

 Arabian peninsula. There the sea of sand reveals itself in all its 

 nakedness, in all its horrors ; with its implacable sky and fiery at- 

 mosphere, its sandy billows, its masses of salt, and, in certain places, 

 with its hidden quicksands capable of devouring entire armies. The 

 Desert of Akhaf, situated towards the extremity of the peninsula, 

 conceals, it is said, several of these abysses, where the hapless 



