208 
HUDLESTON: GEOLOGY OF PALESTINE. 
considerable antiquity of the valley as an independent basin, and 
thus show how impossible is the theory which would date its origin 
fron the catastrophe of the Pentapolis. 
Captain Conder shows four very distinct margins of old lakes, 
which were predecessors of the present Dead Sea. The present 
north shore of the Dead Sea is a shingly beach with a ridge of 
pebbles at the top of a somewhat steep slope. About thirty feet 
above the top of this is a similar one. This marks the surface of 
extinct lake No. 1 ; a hundred feet higher is a third beach, which 
marks the surface of extinct lake No. 2. Above these beaches, and 
some 300ft. above the present Dead Sea, are flat shelves of marl, 
known as the Siddim level ; this marks extinct lake No. 3. And there 
is yet another still higher. All these lakes would obviously fill up a 
considerable expanse of the valleys of the Jordan and the Arabah, and 
their deposits would serve to give us some idea of the history of the 
period. These lacustrine deposits M. Lartet calls the “deposits of the 
Lisan,”from their great development in that peninsula, which wholly 
consists of them. They are, as a rule, very thin bedded marls 
with much salt and gypsum, both in beds and throughout the mass, 
and have considerable resemblance to deposits now going on at the 
bottom of the Dead Sea, where crystals of salt and selenite are 
brought up from the bottom, along with blueish marl. From the 
absence of organic remains, M. Lartet argues that the physical 
conditions must have been pretty much the same as now, except 
probably for the greater quantity of water, and this, M. Lartet con- 
siders, is due to the much greater humidity of the atmosphere during 
Quaternary times. 
Anyhow, what we have before us in these Jordan valley deposits, 
is pretty fair evidence, both on the testimony of Conder and Lartet, 
that neither the waters of the Red Sea, nor of a fresh water system, 
have prevailed over that area where these saline and gypsiferous 
marls have been thrown down, and consequently the existence of 
these old saline lakes at much higher levels than now is proof of the 
considerable antiquity of the present depression. Indeed, as Captain 
Conder remarks, no less than four Dead Seas had dried up before 
the days of Abraham. 
