The Dead Sea lies between stony mountains. On the east are the desert hills of Moab, where Ruth was born and Moses is buried, and on the west lie those of Judea where the children of Israel came after Moses had pointed out to them the Promised Land. There are openings at the north and south, and away at the southwest are works for evaporating the water to make salt.
The Dead Sea has no outlet. The water evaporates so fast that it is usually misty here. It is estimated that over six million tons of water flow into it daily. Nevertheless, its level changes only a little throughout the year, and that at the times of the flood.
Now dip up some of the water in your hand and taste it. It burns your tongue and your lips. It is as bitter as gall. If you drank a glass of it you would probably die. It is the saltiest water on earth. If you will take a gallon and boil it down, you will find that one fourth of the contents is solid. It is six times as salty as the water of the ocean, and a cubic mile of it would contain nine hundred million tons of mineral matter. The sum is so staggering that you cannot comprehend it, but at ninety tons to the car it would take ten million cars to carry that much, and if your cars were a little under forty feet long the train required for the load would reach eighty miles. There is asphalt or pitch in the bottom of the lake and the water has other minerals in addition to salt. Indeed, the salt proper left after boiling comprises only about 7 per cent. of the whole.
If you would further test the water, take an egg and drop it into the sea. It will float, leaving one third of the egg above the surface. A fresh egg will sink in fresh water, and we break our egg to be sure it is fresh.
Another test. Let us strip off our clothing and go in for a swim. You do not know how to swim? That makes no difference in this salty sea. The water is so heavy you could not sink if you tried. You can lie on your back and float all day long. You can stand upright and tread, but it is almost impossible to maintain such a position. Your feet have a tendency to fly to the surface, and you bob up and down like “the monkey on the stick.” Now try to swim. Your feet fly out of the water and you cannot make any headway. Now let us wade out and let the sun dry our skins. We feel as if we had been painted with mucilage. We are gummy and oily and incrusted with salt. We were scratched as we came through the thorn bushes and the salt got into the wounds and they are burning like fire. We shall not be happy until we can get some fresh water to wash off the salt.
An interesting thing about the Dead Sea is the fact that on its shores were the sites of the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, the two towns which became so wicked that the Lord rained fire and brimstone upon them. There are said to be sulphur springs in the country about, and it may have been a volcano which caused the destruction.
It was right here on the plain of the Jordan that the nephew of Abraham and the cousin of Ishmael and Isaac, the good man Lot, had his estate. It was in Sodom that he lived, one of the richest of its citizens, and the only just man in the city. From there he went out with Mrs. Lot and the two girls. And it is said to be at the southwest end of the lake, not far away, that Madame Lot turned and looked back and, as we may suppose, longed for the fleshpots. And lo! she became a pillar of salt. There are still deposits of rock-salt at that end of the lake, and the guides now show the remains of a pillar which they say was once Mrs. Lot, but which has been licked by the camels until it has almost disappeared.