Principal Depressions on the Surface of the Globe. 261 



gressively contracted in its narrowest dimensions, and that by the retreat 

 of the gulf the bifurcation of the Oxus has been developed — that is, has 

 become more and more manifest. One portion of the waters of the Oxus 

 has preserved its course towards the Caspian by a river bed which modern 

 travellers (posterior to the middle of the 16th century) have found dried 

 up. What was at first but an enlarged appendage of a lake, which com- 

 municated laterally with the Oxus, has become the limit of the inferior 

 course of this river. It is thus that Nature on a great scale has repeated 

 the phenomenon, which the hydraulic systems of the Yaryakchi exhibit 

 to the E. and N. E. of the Aral, of the Tchoui, and Talas, terminating, 

 after a course of 130 or 160 leagues, in the lakes of Telegoul, Kaban- 

 koulak, and Talasgol." 



By far the most profound and striking, if not the most extensive de- 

 pression on the surface of the globe is that of the Lake of Asphalt ites or 

 Dead Sea in Palestine. The most remarkable characteristics of this lake 

 were well known to the ancients, and it is described by Deodorus, Pliny, 

 Strabo, and Josephus, and though never surveyed with anything like 

 tolerable care it has for long formed a favourite resort for travellers. 

 Lieutenant Symonds, of the Royal Engineers, in 1843, measured its de- 

 pression by actual levelling, and found the surface of its waters to be 1312 

 feet below those of the Mediterranean. Lieutenant Lynch, of the United 

 States Navy, crossed and recrossed it repeatedly in 1847, taking sound- 

 ings as he went. He confirms the researches of Symonds, and he speaks 

 of having made astronomical and barometrical observations, but gives us 

 no results ; and wonderful to relate, while we organise expeditions to 

 examine the icy seas at an expense of hundreds of thousands of pounds, — 

 send parties into Central Africa to search for we know not what, — mount 

 the fearful table-lands of the Andes, and survey with philosophic care the 

 sacred lakes of the Hindoos, hid deep in the bosom of the Himalayas, — 

 permit officers to assume all sorts of disguises, and practise every variety 

 of questionable deception to be enabled to violate the sanctity of the great 

 Mohammedan shrine, and to inspect that which it is deemed sacrilege for 

 the unbeliever to behold, and is not worth describing even if it could be 

 legitimately seen, — we are content with merely looking at a spot of earth 

 which has more claims on our curiosity as Christians, as well as geogra- 

 phers and philosophers, than any point on the surface of the globe. 

 There is not — to our shame be it spoken — up to this moment anything 

 like a decent or even a creditable account of the physical geography of 

 Palestine in print ! and the vague and general account of it now about to 

 be given, gleaned from all the best authors on the subject, meagre and 

 unsatisfactory as it is, is half guess-work. This most discreditable want 

 it was my purpose next spring to have endeavoured to some extent to 

 have remedied, by taking the levels from Akaba down to the Dead Sea, 

 and so up again by the Valley of the Jordan, and to the sea level, and 

 surveying then all round by the old sea margin by a circuit of probably 

 some 400 or 500 miles. The fulfilment of this purpose, not unlikely to 

 be deferred for the present by another and a very different variety of 

 geographical operations, will, I trust, be resumed should I ever be per- 

 mitted to revisit my native country. 



The Dead Sea is supposed at one time to have united with the eastern 

 limb of the Red Sea, known by the name of the Gulf of Akaba. A slop- 

 ing valley of unknown elevation, called the Wadi Araba, the highest part 

 of which forming the barrier which separates the two, is somewhere be- 

 twixt 60 and 495 feet above high-water mark, and this is supposed to be 

 within 25 or 30 miles of Akaba, the total distance betwixt the two seas 

 being 106 miles. The fact of the Dead Sea being very much below the 

 Mediterranean, as well as the existence of an enormous depression, en- 



