THE Dead Sea is, in many respects, the most wonderful body of water known to history. It is the lowest body of water on earth. Its surface is 1,300 feet lower than the surface of the Mediterranean, though the two seas are only sixty-five miles apart. It receives 6,000,000 tons, or 20,000,000 cubic feet, of water each day; and, while it has no possible outlet, it never fills up. It is no fuller now than it was a thousand years ago. This Sea of Death is wonderful for another reason. While it is forty-six miles long, thirteen miles wide, and while the water is 1,310 feet deep, I can walk across it and never get wet above my waist! I walk out into the sea for a mile or more—I walk not on the water, but in it. I fold my hands across my breast, stretch them out over the water, or lock them over my head, as I choose. I try to sink and can not. I never felt so much like a gourd in all my life. I sit down upon the water like a feather-bed. When tired I lie down. Some men lie when they stand up; but when I lie I am prostrated. I lie on the water, roll over, kick my feet in the air,—but all my attempts at sinking meet with an inglorious failure. Johnson says a man who will not sink in clear water must be of little weight in the world. Determined to make one more effort, I climb to a projecting rock from which I plunge head foremost into the sea. A moment later I am tossed into the air like a cork. Again I strike the water, and again rebound. I am, seemingly, about as heavy on the stomach of the Dead Sea as Jonah was on the stomach of a live whale. He was spewed up—so am I.
Coming up out of the water I find myself completely covered with a thin crust of salt. I hardly know who I am. Johnson suggests that I may be Lot’s wife. One thing is sure; I have a better complexion—at any rate I am whiter now than ever before. Johnson asks why it is that one can not sink in the Dead Sea. The specific gravity of the water is very great. This, of course, makes the water very buoyant, and renders it impossible for one to sink. The extra weight of the water is caused by the great amount of salt in the sea. It is a much easier matter to swim in the ocean than in a running stream, because the former is salt and, therefore, buoyant. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that only four per cent of ocean water is salt. Four per cent is enough to make the ocean very salt and buoyant. But of the Dead Sea water twenty-six to twenty-eight per cent is salt. It has, therefore, six or six and a half times as much salt as the same amount of ocean water has. Then how great its specific gravity! How buoyant its waters! How impossible to sink!
THE DEAD SEA.
This is sometimes called the “Salt Sea,” and, while the name is quite brackish, it is not at all inappropriate; for, as has been said, “the water is a nauseous compound of bitters and Salts.” When I stiffen myself and stretch out on the waters, about half of my person remains above the surface. The water produces something of a stinging sensation; not severe enough, however, to be especially objectionable, unless you should chance to get some of it in your eyes. The buoyancy of the water makes its navigation both difficult and dangerous. Lieut. Lynch, in the following lines, gives us a vivid description of his experiences on this Sea of Death.
“A fresh northwest wind was blowing as we rounded the point. We 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 we were obliged 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 our clothes, our 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 freshened in its fierceness, from the density of the water, it seemed as if their bows were encountering the sledgehammers of the Titans, instead of the opposing waves of an angry sea. The wind blew so fiercely that the boats could make no headway, and I began to fear that both boats would founder. Finding that we were losing every moment, and that, with the lapse of each succeeding one, the danger increased, kept away for the northern shore, in the hope of being yet able to reach it; our arms, our clothes and skins coated with a greasy salt; and our eyes, lips, and nostrils, smarting excessively. How different was the scene before the submerging of the plain, which was ‘even as the garden of the Lord!’
“But, although the sea had assumed a threatening aspect, and the fretted mountains, sharp and incinerated, loomed terrific on either side, and salt and ashes mingled with its sands, and foetid sulphurous springs trickled down its ravines, we did not despair: awe-struck, but not terrified; fearing the worst, yet hoping for the best, we prepared to spend a dreary night upon the dreariest waste we had ever seen.”