'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎17] (36/258)

THE DAED SEA.
Xvii
high-water mark, and this is supposed to be within 25 or 30 miles of Akaba.
the total distance betwixt the two seas being 106 miles. The fact of the Dead
Sea being very much below the Mediterranean, as well as the existence of an en
ormous depression, enclosing and surrounding it, was known to the ancients,
who conferred on it the name of Hollow Syria. One of first surmises of its enor
mous depth was given in 1841 by Sir David Wilkie, who made it 1,200 feet by
barometrical observation—probably the extent to which his barometer was cut.
Two years afterwards Lieutenant Symonds made it by levelling 1,320.2 feet, and
this is now the admitted depression. Lieutenant Lynch in 1847 fathomed water
to the depth of 1,300 feet, so that the hollow is in all 2,620 feet below the surface
of the sea. The bottom of the sea consists of two submerged plains, one 13 feet
and the other 1,300 feet, at an average, below the surface. The area and upper
borders of the hollow, indicated in all likelihood by an old sea margin, and to
which the waters would again rise were a canal, as has been proposed, cut into
it from the Mediterranean on the one side, and Red Sea on the other, are un
known to us. Along the axis of the lake and valley of the Jordan, from the water
shed in the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Araba to Cesarea and Phillipi, is probably 190 miles, with a
bifurcation of about 210 miles to the eastward, terminating about Mount Hermon,
where the streams run in opposite directions. Its greatest breadth appears
to be about 30 to 45 miles, and the area, of the whole depression, which is very-
irregular in form, perhaps somewhere about 7,000 square miles. The lake
itself is about 40 miles by 9, with a probable area of 185 square miles ;
to circuit including all its indentations seems about 420. The rocks around
on the' west side seem to be mainly of the chalk formation, mixed with old
volcanic basalt, and occasionally to all appearance with recent lavas Close
by the lake, about one third along from the northern shore, are masses of yellow
ish limestone, with great beds or pillars of rock salt; and the whole soil, and
bottom of the lake are covered with saline incrustations, petroleum oozing from
the beach, and spreading itself in many places in films over the surface. Pieces
of sulphur lie scattered around—whether the products of a volcano or the results
of the decomposition of the salt does not appear. Near the mouth of the Jordan
hot springs abound. Around the northern shore, and especially manifest, in the
basin of the Jordan, are horizontal lines or terraces of alluvial matter on the
mountains, terminating in abrupt declivities of sand, which lead again to lower
terraces or beaches closely resembling those of the ocean, with here and there
conical hills, with flat horizontal tops, all obviously the result of aqueous action.
From these and other circumstances it is inferred that the Dead Sea was de
pressed to its present level, not by simple evaporation, but by the sudden sinking
of its bottom sufficiently indicated by the abrupt breaks down in the bed of the
Jordan. If the original theory be correct that the Dead Sea was at onetime
connected with the Gulf of Akaba, it is very probable that the ridge of the Wad-
Araba may have risen when some of the convulsions occasioning or deepening the
depression occurred, just as the Uila Bund arose when the village of Siudree, and