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up by a volcano." This account seems to be confirmed by the quantities of ruins still found by travellers on the western border."

"The eruptions themselves have ceased long since, but the effects, which usually succeed them, still continue to be felt at intervals in this country. The coast in general is subject to earthquakes, and history notices several, which have changed the face of Antioch, Laodicea, Tripoli, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon. In our time, in the year 1759, there happened one which caused the greatest ravages. It is said to have destroyed, in the valley of Balbec, upwards of twenty thousand persons; a loss which has never been repaired. For three months the shock of it terrified the inhabitants of Lebanon so much, as to make them abandon their houses, and dwell under tents."

In addition to these remarks of Volney's, a recent traveller, Mr. Legh, states, that on the south-east side of the Dead Sea, on the right of the road that leads to Karrac, red and brown hornstone porphyry, in the latter of which the fel-' spar is much decomposed, syenite, breccia, and a heavy black amygdaloid, containing white specks, apparently of zeolite, are the prevailing rocks. Not far from Shubac, (near the spot marked in D'Anville's Map, Patriarchatus Hierosolymitanus), where there were formerly copper mines, he observed portions of scoriæ. Near the fortress of Shubac, on the left, are two volcanic craters; on the right, one.

The Roman road on the same side is formed of pieces of lava. Masses of volcanic rock also occur in the valley of Ellasar.

The chemical properties of the waters of the Dead Sea, rather lend countenance to the volcanic origin of the surrounding country, as they contain scarcely any thing except

See his account of Syria, attached to Macmichael's Journey from Moscow to Constantinople.

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muriatic salts, Dr. Marcet's analysis* giving in 100 parts of

Now we not only know that muriatic acid is commonly exhaled from volcanos in a state of activity, but that muriatic salts are also frequent products of their eruption.

The other substances met with are no less corroborative of the cause assigned. Great quantities of asphaltum appear floating on the surface of the sea, and are driven by the winds to the east and west bank, where they remain fixed. Antient writers inform us, that the neighbouring inhabitants went out in boats to collect this substance, and that it constituted a considerable branch of commerce. On the southwest bank are hot springs and deep gullies, dangerous to the traveller, were not their position indicated by small pyramidic edifices on the sides. Sulphur and bitumen are also met with on the mountains round.

On the shore of the lake Mr. Maundrel found a kind of bituminous stone, which I infer from his description to be analogous to that of Ragusa in Sicily, noticed in my memoir on the Geology of that Island.t-" It is a black sort of pebble, which being held to the flame of a candle, soon burns, and yields a smoke of a most intolerable stench. It has this property, that it loses a part of its weight, but not of its bulk, by. burning. The hills bordering on the lake are said to abound with this sort of sulphureous (qu. bituminous) stone. I saw pieces of it, adds our author, at the convent of St. John in the Wilderness, two feet square. They were carved in basso relievo, and polished to so high a lustre, as black marble is

*See Phil. Trans. vol. xcvii. p. 269.

+ I have since received a specimen of this stone, which turns out to be preeisely similar to that of Ragusa.

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capable of, and were designed for the ornament of the new church in the convent."

It would appear, that even antecedently to the eruption mentioned in Scripture, bitumen-pits abounded in the plain of Siddim. Thus in the account of the battle between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and some of the neighbouring princes (Gen. ch. 14.) it is said, And the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits—which a learned friend assures me ought to be translated fountains of bitumen.

Mr. Henderson in his Travels in Iceland, will have it, that phænomena similar to those of the Geysers of Iceland, existed likewise in this neighbourhood.* The word Siddim, he says, is derived from a Hebrew root, signifying "to gush out," which is the identical meaning of the Icelandic word Geyser, and it is remarkable, that there exists in Iceland a valley called Geysadal, which signifies the valley of Geysers, and consequently corresponds with the "valley of Siddim."

The latter therefore he thinks should be translated the valley of the Gushing Mountains.

Mr. Henderson further believes, that Sheddim, the object of the idolatrous worship of the Israelites, (Deuter. xxxii. 17. Psalms cvi. 37) translated in our version "Devils," were boiling springs derived from volcanos, and I may add, as some little corroboration of this opinion, that somewhat similar phænomena at the Lacus Palicorum in Sicily, were the objects among the Greeks of peculiar and equally sangui nary superstition.

Mr. Henderson thinks, that it was in imitation of these natural fountains, that Solomon caused to be constructed a number of Jetting Fountains, (as he translates the passage,) of which we read in Ecclesiasticus, cap. ii. 8. My ignorance of the Hebrew language precludes me from forming any opinion as to the probability of these conjectures, but the existence of hot springs in the valley, at a much later period than that to which he refers, is fully established.

D. 154.

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But besides this volcanic eruption, which brought about the destruction of these cities, it would appear that the very plain itself, in which they stood, was obliterated, and that a lake was formed in its stead. This is collected, not only from the apparent non-existence of the valley in which these cities were placed, but likewise from the express words of Scripture, where, in speaking of the wars which took place between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and certain adjoining tribes, it is added, that the latter assembled in the valley of Siddim, which is the Salt (i. e. the Dead) Sea. It is therefore supposed that the Lake itself occupies the site of this once fertile valley, and in order to account for the change, Volney and others have imagined, that the destruction of the cities was followed by a tremendous earthquake, which sunk the whole country considerably below its former level.

But the sinking of a valley, besides that it is quite an unprecedented phænomenon in the extent assumed, would hardly account for the obliteration of the antient bed of the Jordan, a river, which, though now absorbed in the Dead Sea, from whence it is carried off by the mere influence of evaporation, must, before that Lake existed, have continued its course either to the Red Sea or the Mediterranean.

Now if the Dead Sea had been formed by the cause assigned, the waters I conceive would still continue to have discharged themselves by their old channel, unless indeed the subsidence had been very considerable, and, then the course of the Jordan, just north of the Dead Sea, would have presented, what I believe no traveller, antient or modern, has remarked, a succession of rapids and cataracts, proportionate to the greatness of the descent.

That the Jordan really did discharge its waters at one period into the Red Sea, is rendered extremely probable by the late interesting researches of Mr. Burckhardt, who has been the first to discover the existence of a great longitu

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dinal valley, extending, in nearly a straight line south west, from the Dead Sea as far as Akaba, at the extremity of the eastern branch of the Red Sea, and continuous with that, in which the Jordan flows from its origin in the mountains near Damascus.* It was probably through this very valley, that the trade between Jerusalem and the Red Sea was in former times carried on. The caravan, loaded at Ezengebe with the treasures of Ophir, might after a march of six or seven days deposit their loads in the warehouses of Solomon.

This important discovery seems to place it beyond ques tion, that if there ever was a time at which the Jordan was not received into a lake, which presented a surface con siderable enough to carry off its waters by evaporation,t the latter would have been discharged by this valley into the Red Sea, and hence every theory of the origin of the Lake Asphaltitis must be regarded as imperfect, which does not account for the obliteration of this channel.

For my own part were I to offer a conjecture on the subject, I should suppose, that the same volcano which over whelmed with its ejected materials the cities of the plain, threw out at the same time a current of lava sufficiently considerable to stop the course of the Jordan, the waters of which, unable to overcome this barrier, accumulated in the plain of Siddim until they converted it into the present Jake. I do not know that any traveller has observed what is the ordinary depth of the Dead Sea, but if we only ima gine a current of lava, like that which in 1667 proceeded from Etna, and flowed into the sea above Catania, to have

* See the Map of the Dead Sea attached to this volume.

+ Several lakes are mentioned in Persia similarly circumstanced, and par ticularly one near Tabriz. See Morier's 2nd Journey in Persia. It is evident that every lake without an outlet, which is supplied with water from rivers flowing through a stratum impregnated with salt, must necessarily be strongly saline, so that there is no absolute necessity for supposing the ingredients tained in the waters of the Dead Sea to have arisen from volcanic exhalations,

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This must necessarily have been the case, as (according to Maundrell and other travellers), the Dead Sea is enclosed on the east and west with ex ceeding high mountains.