course. The wide and deeply-depressed plain through which the river flows, is generally barren, treeless, and without verdure; and the mountains, or rather, the cliffs and slopes of the risen uplands, present, for the most part, a wild and cheerless aspect. The verdure, such as it is, may only be sought on and near the lower valley or immediate channel of the Jordan. No one statement can apply to the scenery of its entire course; but this description given of the central part of the river's course, is a fair specimen of the kind of scenery which the passage of the river offers.

Lieutenant Lynch describes the character of the whole scene of this dreary waste as singularly wild and impressive.

MLynch.

Looking out upon the desert, bright with reverberated light and heat, was, he says, like beholding a conflagration from a window at twilight. Each detail of the strange and solemn scene could be examined as through a lens. The mountains towards the west rose up like islands from the sea, with the billows

heaving at their bases. The rough peaks caught the slanting sunlight, while sharp black shadows marked the sides turned from the rays. Deep rooted in the plain, the bases of the mountains heaved the garment of the earth away, and rose abruptly in naked pyramidal crags, each scar and fissure as palpably distinct as though within reach, and yet were far distant. Toward the south, the ridges and higher masses of the range, as they

swept away in the distance, were aerial and faint, and softened into dimness by a pale transparent mist. The plain that sloped away from the bases of the hills was broken into ridges and multitudinous conelike mounds, resembling tumultuous water at the meeting of two adverse tides, and presented a wild and checkered tract of land, with spots of vegetation flourishing upon the frontiers of irreclaimable sterility. A low, pale, and yellow ridge of conical hills marks the termination of the higher terrace, beneath which sweeps gently this lower plain with a similar undulating surface, half redeemed from barrenness by sparse verdure and thistle-covered hillocks. Still lower was the valley of the Jordanthe sacred river!-its banks fringed with perpetual verdure; winding in a thousand graceful mazes; the pathway cheered with songs of birds, and its own clear voice of gushing minstrelsy; its course a bright line in this cheerless waste.

Concerning an earlier portion of the river's course, about one-third from the lake of Tiberias, Lieutenant Lynch says, that, for hours in their swift descent the boats floated down in silence-the silence of the wilderness. Here and there were spots of solemn beauty. The numerous birds sang with a music strange and manifold; the willow branches were spread upon the stream like tresses, and creeping mosses and clambering weeds, with a multitude of white and silvery little flowers, looked out from among them; and the cliff swallow wheeled over the falls, or went at his own will, darting through the arched vistas, and shadowed and shaped by the meeting foliage on the banks. There was but little variety in the scenery of the river; the streams sometimes washed the bases of the sandy hills, at other times meandered between low banks, generally fringed with trees and fragrant with blossoms. Some points presented views exceedingly picturesque. The western shore is peculiar from the high calcarious limestone hills which form a barrier to the stream when swollen by the efflux of the Sea of Galilee, during the

winter and early spring; while the left and eastern bank is low and fringed with tamarisk and willow, and occasionally a thicket of lofty cane, and tangled masses of shrubs and creeping plants, gave it the appearance of a jungle.

No less than twenty-two nights were spent by the party upon the lake. During this time the whole circuit of it was made, including the back-water at the southern extremity, which had never before been explored in boats. Every object of interest upon the banks was examined; and the lake was crossed and recrossed in a zigzag direction through its whole extent, for the purpose of sounding. The figure of the lake, as sketched by the party, is somewhat different from that usually given to it. The breadth is more uniform throughout; it is less narrowed at the northern extremity, and less widened on approaching the peninsula in the south. In its general dimensions it is longer, but is not so wide as usually represented. Its length by the map is forty miles, by an average breadth of about nine miles. The water, a nauseous compound of bitters and salts.

A fresh north wind was blowing as they rounded the point. They endeavored to steer a little to the north of west, to make a true west course, and threw the patent log overboard to measure the distance; but the wind rose so rapidly that the boats could not keep head to wind, and it became necessary to haul the log in. The sea continued to rise with the increasing wind, which gradually freshened to a gale, and presented an agitated surface of foaming brine; the spray, evaporating as it fell, left incrustations of salt upon the voyagers' clothes, as also their hands and faces; and, while it conveyed a prickly sensation wherever it touched the skin, was, above all, exceedingly painful to the eyes. The boats, heavily laden, struggled sluggishly at first; but when the wind. increased in its fierceness, from the density of the water it seemed as if their bows were encountering the sledge-hammers of the Titans, instead of the opposing waves of an angry sea. Finally, such was the force of the wind, that it was feared both boats must founder. Knowing that they were losing advantage every moment, and that with the lapse of each succeeding one

can venture

upon this sea and live, and the sad fates of Costigan and Molyneux are repeatedly cited to deter such attempts. The first one spent a few days, the last about twenty hours, and returned to the place from whence he had embarked without landing on its shores. One was found dying upon the shore; the other expired, immediately after his return, of fever contracted upon its waters.

The northern shore is an extensive mud flat, with a sandy plain beyond, the very type of desolation; branches and trunks of trees lay scattered in every direction some charred and blackened as by fire, others white with an incrustation of salt. The north-western shore is an unmixed bed of gravel, coming in a gradual slope from the mountains to the sea. The eastern coast is a rugged line of mountains, bare of all vegetation-a continuation of the Hauran range, coming from the north, and extending south beyond the scope of vision, throwing out three marked and seemingly equi-distant promontories from its south-eastern extremities.

Lieutenant Lynch fully sounded the sea, determined its geographical position, took

and deepest one, in a line corresponding with the bed of the Jordan, is a ravine, which also seems to correspond with the Wady el-Jeib, or ravine within a ravine, at the south end of the sea.

At one time, the sea was observed to assume an aspect peculiarly somber. Unstirred by the wind, it lay smooth and unruffled as an inland lake. The great evaporation inclosed it in a thin transparent vapor, its purple tinge contrasting strongly with the extraordinary color of the sea beneath, and, where they blended in the distance, giving it the appearance of smoke from burning sulphur. It seemed a vast caldron of metal, fused but motionless. The surface of the sea was one wide sheet of phosphorescent foam, and the waves, as they broke upon the shore, threw a sepulchral light upon the dead bushes and scattered fragments of rocks. The exhalations and saline deposits are as unfriendly to vegetable life as the waters are to animal existence; that fruit can be brought to perfection there, may therefore well be considered improbable.

The celebrated "Apples of Sodom," so often spoken of by ancient and modern

writers, are peculiar to this locality. The plant is a perennial, specimens of which have been found from ten to fifteen feet high, and seven or eight feet in girth. It It has a gray, cork-like bark, with long and oval leaves. The fruit resembles a large smooth apple or orange, and when ripe is of a yellow color. It is fair to the eye, and soft to the touch, but when pressed, it explodes with a puff, leaving in the hand only the shreds of the rind and a few fibers. It is, indeed, chiefly filled with air like a bladder, which gives it the round form, while in the center is a pod containing a quantity of fine silk with seeds. When green, the fruit, like the leaves and the bark, affords, when cut or broken, a thickish, white milky fluid. This plant, however, which from being in Palestine. found only on the shores of the Dead Sea, was locally regarded as being the special and characteristic product of that lake, is produced also in Nubia, Arabia, and Persia. Thus, this assumed mystery of the 'Sea of Death' is a simple phenomenon of nature, easily explained; as is also that of the alleged fire and smoke of the lake, being, as already described, simply mist and phosphorescence.

In regard to the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was turned,-one of the most remarkable facts recorded in holy writ, and the continued existence of which has always been asserted by the natives, as well as by many travelers, Lieutenant Lynch asserts that a pillar is there to be seen; the same, without doubt, to which the reports of the natives and of travelers refer. But that this pillar, or any like it, is or was that into which Lot's wife was transformed, cannot, of course, be demonstrated.

It is a lofty, round pillar, standing apparently detached from the general mass,

at the head of a deep, narrow, and abrupt chasm. Immediately pulling in for the shore, the lieutenant in company with Dr. Anderson, went up and examined it. The beach was a soft, slimy mud, encrusted with salt, and a short distance from the water, covered with saline fragments, and flakes of bitumen. They found the pillar to be of solid salt, capped with carbonate of lime, cylindrical in front and pyramidal behind. The upper or rounded part is about forty feet high, resting on a kind of oval pedestal, from forty to sixty feet above the level of the sea. It slightly decreases in size upwards, crumbles at the top, and is one entire mass of crystallization. A prop or buttress connects it with the mountain behind, and the whole is covered with debris of a light stone color. Its peculiar shape is attributable to the action of the winter rains. Lieutenant Lynch gives no credit to the representations that connect this pillar or column with Lot's wife. And this is true of most travelers who have visited the spot, though Montague gives it, as his opinion, that Lot's wife having lingered behind, she, while so lingering, became overwhelmed in the descending fluid, and formed the model or foundation for this extraordinary column; a lasting memorial of God's punishing a most deliberate act of disobedience.

After an absence of a little more than a year, Lieutenant Lynch returned, with his companions, to the United States, the expedition having been highly successful in accomplishing the purpose for which it was planned; comparing most favorably in this respect with the results of explorations made by other parties, and receiving the highest encomiums of English reviewers, some of whose comments, throwing additional light on various points involved in the subject, are here presented.