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PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



light into the deep, dark chasm below, illuminating the calm surface of the sluggish 

 waters. All was still as the silence of the grave. Our Arabs were sleeping round us on 

 the ground ; only the tall pensive figure of the sheikh was seen sitting before the door of 

 our tent, his eyes fixed intently upon us as we wrote." 



The waters of the Dead Sea are intolerably salt, bitter and nauseous to the taste, so 

 pungent that the eyes smart severely after bathing in them, and extremely buoyant. 

 " Two of us," says the traveller just quoted, " bathed in the sea ; and although I could 

 never swim before, either in fresh or salt water, yet here I could sit, lie, or swim in the 

 water, without difficulty." The following are the analyses of Dr. Marcet in 1807 ; of 

 Professor Gmelin of Tubingen in 1826 ; and of Dr. Apjohn of Dublin in 1839. The 

 water analysed by the latter was taken from a point just below the mouth of the Jordan, 

 after the rainy season, and hence the smaller proportion of salts, and the less specific 

 gravity, presented by his analysis. 



There appears to be no animal or vegetable life in this supersalt sea, and the water-fowl 

 are not attracted to its surface, owing to the absence of their customary food. " I dis- 

 mounted," says Seitzen, "and followed for a time the shore of the sea, to look for 

 conchylia and sea-plants, but found none of either. And as fish live upon these, it might 

 naturally be expected that no tenants of the waters would exist here ; and this is con- 

 firmed by the experience of all whom I have inquired of, and who could know about it. 

 Snails and muscles I have not found in the lake ; some that I picked up on the shore 

 were land snails." It is not improbable, however, that the Jordan, when swollen by 

 the rains, may carry down fish into the lake, or they may voluntarily forsake the river- 

 current ; but, as the naturalist Schubert remarks, " they soon pay for this love of 

 wandering with their lives ; " and hence small dead fishes are often picked up, which the 

 waves have thrown upon the strand. 



The most remarkable of all the characteristics of the Mare Mortuum, is the depression 

 of its level below that of the Mediterranean. There is no doubt respecting this fact, 

 though estimates vary as the depth of the depression. From several observations on the 

 temperature of "boiling water, and by the barometer, Messrs. Moore and Beke inferred 

 its surface to be 500 feet below the level of the ocean. Professor Schubert concluded it 

 to be 600 feet ; but M. M. Russegger and Bertou, in 1838, made the depression extend to 

 the enormous amount of 1400 feet. The preceding measurements were barometrical; 

 but Lieutenant Symonds of the royal engineers has since surveyed the country inter- 

 vening between the two seas, and trigonometrically ascertained the level of the Dead Sea 

 to be 1337 feet below that of the Mediterranean. He proceeded from level to level by 

 two different routes, and the results of each differ by merely an insignificant fraction, so 

 that the question may now be said to be decided with exactness. A similar extraordinary 

 circumstance characterises the Caspian and the Sea of Aral, and extends far into the 



