nce of the valley and the break-up of the bed of the stream.

When, after the disaster, the inhabitants of neighboring regions came
to visit the scene of it, they found the whole aspect of the district
altered. The valley of Siddim had ceased to exist, and an immense
sheet of water covered the space which it once occupied. Beyond this
vast reservoir, to the south, the Jordan, which formerly fertilized
the country as far as the Red Sea, had also disappeared. The whole
country was covered with lava, ashes and salt; all the cultivated
fields, the hamlets and villages, had been involved in the cataclysm.

The record of this great catastrophe is preserved not only by
Scripture, but by the living and spoken traditions of the East, all
the legends of Syria, as well as ancient historians like Tacitus and
Strabo, relating how Lake Asphaltite was formed during the terrible
shock and how opulent cities were swallowed up in the abyss or
destroyed by fire from out of the earth.

But even if popular traditions had been forgotten, and if the writings
of ancient authors had been lost, the very aspect of the country would
suffice to show that it had suffered from some terrible subterranean
convulsion. As it was upon the morrow of the catastrophe itself, so it
has remained with its calcined rocks, its blocks of salt, its masses
of black lava, its rough ravines, its sulphurous springs, its boiling
waters, its bituminous marshes, its riven mountains, and its vast Lake
Asphaltite, which is the Dead Sea.

This sea, the depth of which has never been sounded, evokes by its
origin and its mysterious aspect, the dolorous image of death.
Situated about 690 feet below the level of the ocean, in the
depression of the soil caused by the earthquake, its waters extend
over an area of a hundred square leagues to the foot of the salt
mountains and basaltic rocks which encircle it. One can detect no
trace of vegetation or animal life; not a sound is heard upon its
shores, impregnated with salt and bitumen; the birds avoid flying over
its dreary surface from which emanate deadly effluvia, and nothing can
exist in its bitter, salt, oily, and heavy waters. Not a breeze ever
stirs the surface of this silent sea, nothing moves therein save the
thick load of asphalt which now and again rises from the bottom to the
surface and floats lazily on to the desolate strand.

The Jordan has remained what it was in ancient times, the blessed
stream, the vivifying a