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rising sheer out of the water ; the surface of the plain along 
the shores is a desert — an Arabah, covered with a white 
nitrous crust, like hoar-frost ; vegetation only exists where a 
little fountain bursts from the ground, or a streamlet murmurs 
down to the lake. In fact, for stern grandeur, and silent, 
lonely desolation, the shores of the Dead Sea are almost 
unparalleled. 
24. As in the environs of the Sea of Galilee, we find here • 
also many traces of volcanic action, both recent and remote.* 
The warm spring of Callirrhoe on the eastern side has been 
long celebrated; and there ai’e two others, though less 
copious, on the western side. Most of the fountains around 
tho lake are brackish ; and at the south-western extremity is 
a range of hills, about seven miles long and some 300 feet 
high, composed almost entirely of rock-salt, and bearing an 
old and well-known name , — “ the hills of Sodom” These 
facts, together with the great and incessant evaporation, 
account for the intense saltness of the sea. Canon Tristram 
describes a valley at the northern end of the hills of Sodom, 
of which the sides are cliffs of old limestone, showing here 
and there on their surface traces of post-tertiary marl; but 
he says, “ since the marl has been washed out, there has been 
a second filling-in of an extraordinary character, which is 
only now in course of denudation. There are exposed on the 
sides of the Wady, and chiefly on the south, large masses of 
bitumen mingled with gravel. These overlie a thin stratum 
of sulphur, which again overlies a thicker stratum of sand, so 
strongly impregnated with sulphur that it yields powerful 
fumes on being sprinkled over a hot coal. Many great blocks 
of bitumen have been washed down the gorge, and lie scat- 
tered over the plain below, along with huge boulders, and 
other traces of tremendous floods. The phenomenon com- 
mences about half a mile from where the Wady opens on the 
plain, and may be traced at irregular intervals for nearly a 
mile farther up. The bitumen has many small water-worn 
pebbles embedded in it. We are at once led to inquire what 
has been the probable origin of this singular deposit. The 
first solution that susrgests itself is that the bitumen and 
sulphur have been washed up when the sea was at this level ; 
the next, that it may have been deposited by a spring on the 
spot. Of the latter we could find no traces, and all appear- 
ances are against it. Against the former supposition are 
* These I purpose to examine with some care, as I believe they serve to 
explain, if not the actual destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, at least the 
mode in which they probably were destroyed by the employment of natural 
agencies under supernatural guidance. 
