THE 



AMERICAN 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, &c. 



Art. I. — Some Observations upon the Valley of the Jordan and 

 the Dead Sea ; by John D. Sherwood, A. B. of New York. 



If the biblical scholar has so much reason for the profoundest 

 regret, when he reflects upon the long series of untrustworthy 

 accounts with which the monkish travellers to Palestine have 

 abused his earnest and patient enquiries after the sacred topog- 

 raphy of that interesting country ; surely the geologist and the 

 explorer of natural history have equally strong grounds for com- 

 plaint, if not of censure ; since research there, besides the reward 

 with which it must be attended in adding new and valuable 

 facts to the great body of scientific knowledge, connects itself 

 necessarily with the intelligent illustration of the Holy Text. 

 Among the crowd of palmers, crusaders and general tourists who 

 have written upon the Holy Land, scarcely half a dozen can be 

 named who have given such a well-defined and systematic de- 

 scription of the appearance, even of its physical surface, as to 

 convey any very precise notion of it to the general reader ; while 

 with the exception of the detached but truthful observations of 

 Burckhardt, Seetzen, Hasselquist, Irby, Mangles and Dr. Robin- 

 son, the untravelled geologist wants altogether the materials for 

 an intelligent arrangement of its geological phenomena, and the 

 data from which to derive the organic changes to which, at an 

 earlier period, the whole country has been subjected. 



That the whole of Syria has been, even during the historical 

 era, the theatre of important subterranean movements, in com- 



Vol. xLvlii, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1844. 1 



