'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎16] (35/258)

XVI
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY.
16th century) have found dried up. What was at first but an enlarged appen
dage of a lake which communicated laterally with the Oxus, has become the
limit of the inferior course of this river. It is thus that Nature on a great scale
has repeated the phenomenon, which the hydraulic systems of the Yaryakchi
exhibit to the E. and N. E. of the Aral, of the Tchoui, and Talas, terminating
after a course of 130 or 160 leagues in the lakes Telegoul, Kaban-koulak, and
TalasgoL’ .
By far the most profound and striking, if not the most extensive depression on
the surface of the globe is that of the Lake of Asphaltites or Dead Sea, in Pales
tine. The most remarkable characteristics of this lake were well known to the an
cients, and it is described by Deodorus, Pliny, Strabo and Josephus, and
though nev^r surveyed with anything like tolerable care, it has for long formed
a favorable resort for travellers. Lieutenant Symonds, of the Eoyal Engineers,
in 1843, measured its depression by actual levelling, and found the surface
of its waters to be 1,312 feet below those of the Mediterranean, Lieute
nant Lynch, of the United States Navy, crossed and recrossed it repeatedly
in 1847, taking soundings Measurements of the depth of a body of water. as he went. He confirms the researches of Symonds,
and he speaks of having made astronomical and barometrical observations,
but gives us no results; and wonderful to relate, while we organize expeditions,
to examine the icy seas, at an expense of hundreds of thousands of pounds ;
send parties into Central Africa to search for we know not what,—mount the
fearful table-lands of the Andes, and survey with philosophic care the sacred
lakes of the Hindoos, hid deep in the bosom of the Himalayas,—permit officers
to assume all sorts of disguises, and practise every variety of questionable
deception to be enabled to violate the sanctity of the great Mahomedau
shrine, and to inspect that which it is deemed sacrilege for the unbeliever to
behold, and is not worth describing even if it could be legitimately seen,—
we are content with merely looking at a spot of earth which has more claims
on our curiosity as Christians, as well as geographers and philosophers,
than any point on the surface of the globe. There is not, to our shame be
it spoken, up to this moment anything like a decent or even a creditable
account of the Physical Geography of Palestine in print! and the vague and
general account of it now about to be given, gleaned from the best authors
on the subject, meagre and unsatisfactory as it is, is half guess work. This most
discreditable want it was my purpose next spring to have endeavoured to some
extent to have remedied, by taking the levels from Akaba down to the Dead
Sea, and so up again by the Valley of the Jordan, and to the sea level, and
surveying then all round by the old sea margin by a circuit of probably some
400 or 500 miles. The fulfilment of this purpose, not unlikely to be deferred
for the present by another and a very different variety of geographical opera
tions, will, I trust, be resumed, should I ever be permitted to revisit my native
country.
The Dead Sea is supposed at one time to have united with the eastern limb
of the Red Sea known by the name of the Gulf of Akaba. A sloping valley
of unknown elevation called the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Araba, the highest part of which forming