262 Dr George Buist on the 



closing and surrounding it, was known to the ancients, who conferred on 

 the name of Hollow Syria. One of the first surmises of its enormous depth 

 was given in 1841 by Sir David Wilkie, who made it 1200 feet by baro- 

 metrical observation — probably the extent to which his barometer was cut. 

 Two years afterwards Lieutenant Symonds made it, by levelling, 1320*2 

 feet, and this is now the admitted depression. Lieutenant Lynch, in 

 JL847, fathomed water to the depth of 1300, so that the hollow is in all 

 2620 feet below the surface of the sea. The bottom of the sea consists of 

 two submerged plains, one 13 feet and the other 1300 feet, at an average, 

 below the surface. The area and upper borders of the hollow, indicated 

 in all likelihood by an old sea margin, and to which the waters would again 

 rise were a canal, as has been proposed, cut into it from the Mediterranean 

 on the one side, and Red Sea on the other, are unknown to us. Along 

 the axis of the lake and valley of the Jordan, from the water-shed in the 

 AVadi Araba to Cesarea and Philippi, is probably 19 ) miles, with a bifur- 

 cation of about 210 miles to the eastward, terminating about Mount Her- 

 mon, where the streams run in opposite directions. Its greatest breadth 

 appears to be about 30 to 45 miles, and the area of the whole depression, 

 which is very irregular in form, perhaps somewhere about 7000 square 

 miles. The lake itself is about 40 miles by 9, with a probable area of 185 

 square miles ; its circuit, including all its indentations, seems about 420. 

 The rocks around on the west side seem to be mainly of the chalk forma- 

 tion, mixed with old volcanic basalt, and occasionally to all appearance 

 with recent lavas. Close by the lake, about one-third along from the 

 northern shore, are masses of yellowish limestone, with great beds or pil- 

 lars of rock salt ; and the whole soil, and bottom of the lake, are covered 

 with saline incrustations, petroleum oozing from the beach, and spreading 

 itself in many places in films over the surface. Pieces of sulphur lie scat - 

 tered around — whether the products of a volcano, or the results of the 

 decomposition of the salt does not appear. Near the mouth of the Jordan 

 hot springs abound. Around the northern shore, and especially mani- 

 fest in the basin of the Jordan, are horizontal lines or terraces of alluvial 

 matter on the mountains, terminating in abrupt declivities of sand, which 

 lead again to lower terraces or beaches closely resembling those of the 

 ocean, with here and there conical hills, with flat horizontal tops, all ob- 

 viously the result of aqueous action. From these and other circumstances 

 it is inferred that the Dead Sea was depressed to its present level, not by 

 simple evaporation, but by the sudden sinking of its bottom sufficiently 

 indicated by the abrupt breaks down in the bed of the Jordan. If the 

 original theory be correct that the Dead Sea was at one time connected 

 with the Gulf of Akaba, it is very probable that the ridge of the Wadi 

 Araba may have risen when some of the convulsions occasioning or deep- 

 ening the depression occurred, just as the Ulla Bund arose when the vil- 

 lage of Sin dree, and the portion of the Runn of Cutch around descended 

 in June 1819. There is not the slightest reason to associate any of these 

 convulsions, which must have been on a scale vast enough to destroy all 

 animal life, with the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, 

 and the surface of the country in the days of the patriarchs was probably 

 not dissimilar to what it is at the present day. 



Dr Graves enumerates a number of points in which the Great Salt Lake 

 of America and the Dead Sea resemble each other. They are both situ- 

 ated in deep valleys, the mountains surrounding them being marked with 

 terraces or old sea margins — proofs of a succession of sudden sinkings in 

 the earth beneath. The shores of both abound with deposits of salt, 

 with petroleum, and with sulphur ; near both are hot springs, and other 

 volcanic phenomena. In the valleys of both are fresh-water lakes — 

 Tiberias in the one and Utah in the other, through which flow the 



