Palestine, or, the Holy Land: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Michael Russell

Author:Michael Russell [Russell, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Travel, History
ISBN: 4064066133894
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

We need not add that such a liquid must be equally salt and bitter. As might be expected, too, it is found to deposit its salts in copious incrustations, and to prove a ready agent in all processes of petrifaction. Clothes, boots, and hats, if dipped in the lake, or accidentally wetted with its water, are found, when dried, to be covered with a thick coating of these minerals. Hence, we cannot be surprised to hear that the Lake Asphaltites does not present any variety of fish. Mariti asserts that it produces none, and even that those which are carried into it by the rapidity of the Jordan perish almost immediately upon being immerged in its acrid waves. A few shell-snails constitute the sole tenants of its dreary shores, unmixed either with the helix or the muscle.

It was formerly believed that the approach to Asphaltites was fatal to birds, and that, like another lake of antiquity, it had the power of drawing them down from the wing into its poisonous waters. This dream, propagated by certain visionary travellers, is now completely discredited. Flocks of swallows may be seen skimming along its surface with the utmost impunity, while the absence of all other species is easily explained by a glance at the naked hills and barren plains, which supply no vegetable food.

The historian Josephus, who measured the Dead Sea, found that in length it extended about five hundred and eighty stadia, and in breadth one hundred and fifty—according to our standard, somewhat more than seventy miles by nineteen. A recent traveller, to whose unpublished journal we have repeatedly alluded, remarks that the lake, when he visited it, was sunk or hollow, and that the banks had been recently under water, being still very miry and difficult to pass. The shores were covered with dry wood, some of it good timber, which they say is brought by the Jordan from the country of the Druses. "The water is pungently salt, like oxymuriate of soda. It is incredibly buoyant. G—— bathed in it, and when he lay still on his back or belly, he floated with one-fourth at least of his whole body above the water. He described the sensation as extraordinary, and more like lying on a feather-bed than floating on water. On the other hand, he found the greatest resistance in attempting to move through it: it smarted his eyes excessively. I put a piece of stick in: it required a good deal of pressure to make it sink, and when let go it bounded out again like a blown bladder. The water was clear, and of a yellowish tinge, which might be from the colour of the stones at bottom, or from the hazy atmosphere. There were green shrubs down to the water's edge in one place, and nothing to give an idea of any thing blasting in the neighbourhood of the sea; the desert character of the soil extending far beyond the possibility of being affected by its influence."[115]

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