334 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 89. 



of the sea, ten miles square, and but one or 

 two feet deep, where sulphur, deposited by 

 many hot springs, is abundant in the clay, 

 and where bitumen oozes from every crev- 

 ice of the rock, and every earthquake dis- 

 lodges great sheets of it from the bottom of 

 the lake, where the Arabs still dig pits for 

 the ' stone of Moses ' to gather in, and 

 sell it in Jerusalem, and where, in that 

 most ancient fragment of the Pentateuch, 

 four kings fought against five, and the 

 kings of Sodom and Gomorrah slipped in 

 the slime-pits and fell. One who has read 

 of the burning of an oil well or Oil Creek, 

 or in Apscheron will have a clear idea of 

 the catastrophe which overtook the cities of 

 the plain where the Lord rained upon Sod- 

 om and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire 

 out of Heaven. 



Following the latest extremely interest- 

 ing researches of Blankenkorn,* we may 

 picture the upper cretaceous plateau of 

 Judea— an old land, cleft at the end of the 

 Tertiary by many faults, between which a 

 great block sank to form the bottom of this 

 deep sea. It carried down in the fossilifer- 

 ous and gypsum-bearing beds the source of 

 the bitumen and the sulphur. We may 

 picture the waters standing much higher 

 than now during the pluvial period, which 

 matched the northern glacial period, rising 

 nearly to the level of the Eed Sea, but 

 never joining it. In the succeeding arid 

 interglacial period, the time of the steppe 

 fauna in Europe, the sea shrank to within 

 a hundred meters of its present level, and 

 deposited the great bed of rock salt which 

 underlies the low plateaus around its south- 

 ern end. The advent of the second glacial 

 period was here the advent of a second 

 pluvial period, which swelled the waters 

 and carried the bitumen- cemented conglom- 

 erates over the salt beds to complete the 



* Dr. Max Blankenkorn, Entstehung und Geschichte 

 des Todten Meers. Zeit. Deutsch. Palestina-Vereins, 

 vol. xix., p. 1, 1896. 



low plateau. After the second arid period 

 with some lava flows, and a third pluvial 

 period with the formation of a lower and 

 broader terrace, the waters shrank to the 

 present saturated bitterns in the present 

 arid period. In the earlier portion of this 

 last or post-glacial stadium, a final sinking 

 of a fraction of the bottom of the trough, 

 near the south end of the lake, dissected 

 the low salt plateau, sinking its central 

 parts beneath the salt waters, while frag- 

 ments remain buttressed against the great 

 walls of the trench forming the plains of 

 Djebel Usdum and the peninsula El Lisan, 

 with the swampy Sebcha between. Im- 

 agine a central portion of one of the low 

 plains which extend south from the ' Fin- 

 ger Lakes ' to sink, .submerging Ithaca or 

 Havana in a shallow extension of the lake 

 waters. It exposed the wonderful eastern 

 wall of Dijebel Usdum, seven miles long, 

 with 30-45 m. of clear blue salt at the base, 

 capped by 125-140 m. of gypsum-bearing 

 marls impregnated with sulphur, and con- 

 glomerates at times cemented by bitumen. 

 It was this or some similar and later sink- 

 ing of the ground, at the time when geology 

 and history join, which, with its earth- 

 quakes, overthrew the cities of the plain 

 and caused the outpour of petroleum from 

 the many fault fissures and the escape of 

 great volumes of sulphurous and gaseous 

 emanations, which, ignited either sponta- 

 neously, by lightning or by chance, fur- 

 nished the brimstone and fire from heaven, 

 and the smoke of the land going up as the 

 smoke of a furnace which Abraham saw 

 from the plains of Judea. 



But with Lot's wife the case is different. 

 The bed of salt out of which she was carved, 

 and has been many times carved, was ex- 

 posed by the very catastrophe which de- 

 stroyed the cities ; and Lot fled to Zoar in 

 a direction opposite to that in which the 

 salt bed lies. As Oscar Fraas found his 

 Arabs calling the salt pyramid ^ Lot's col- 



