142 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



BASIN OF THE DEAD SEA. 



Tiif.se convulsions of the surface are external signs of the 

 gallery that passes westward ; but there is a second, which 

 turns from beneath Taurus, south of Syria and Palestine, pro- 

 ducing, in the valley of Jordan, the celebrated Dead Sea, or 

 Asphaltic Lake, regarded as the deepest basin, beneath the 

 level of the sea, in the known world, the surface of the water 

 being far below that of the Caspian. No exact measurement 

 of this depression of the soil is, as yet, rigidly determined, 

 because the instruments employed for the purpose, — the mer- 

 cury rising to the summit of the tube, — have always failed, by 

 the excess of their indications, to offer a trustworthy basis for 

 calculation. Russeger, the last scientific traveller, being simi- 

 larly disappointed, gives, from other calculations, the surface 

 of the lake, at the mouth of the Jordan, as 1319 French feet 

 below the Mediterranean ; Jerusalem, by measurement, as 2479 

 feet above it ; and yet no traveller remarks, that if these state- 

 ments be nearly correct, the ridge behind, or west of Jerusalem, 

 being in sight from the lake, would be more that 4000 English 

 feet higher and loftier than any mountain in Great Britain ; * 

 nor is there any notice taken of the levels of the lake, as com- 

 pared with the Gulf of Akkaba, — which is nearly on the same 

 level as the Mediterranean, — and the elevation of the ridge 

 which parts the Dead Sea from Wady Moosa. Already, 

 before the era of Abraham, it is evident, by the notice of slime 

 pits (naphtha) in the plain of Gomorrah, that volcanic action 

 was kindled ; and when the surface subsided into the Asphal- 



* According to measurements of British naval officers, taken after the 

 cat ture of Acre, in 1S39, it appears — by lines of altitude, carried from 

 the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, &c. — that the Lake of Tiberias was 

 84 English feet below the Mediterranean ; the Arabah al Kadesh 91 feet ; 

 the Dead Sea, 1337 ; whence it is plain no region of equal extent, on the 

 earth, presents phenomena of such great difference ; for the culminating 

 point of Libanus rises, at Mount Hermon, to 10,000 feet. 



