THE DEAD SEA

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3278, 12 March 1931, Page 2

THE DEAD SEA

The Dead Sea is so named from the old belief that no living object could dwell in it, and that its exhalations were so poisonous that even birds flying over it dropped dead. This is now known to be a greatly exaggerated account, as a few fish are -to be found in the sea. Chateaubriand, indeed, alludes to the noise made by “multitudes of

small fish, which come out of the lake and about on the shore.” The inhabitants of the country regard the Dead Sea with feelings of terror, owing to the tradition that its waters cover the engulfed cities of Sodom and Gomon’ah. “Those waters of death stretched into the southern desert, and all around as far as the eye could follow, blank hills, piled over hills, pale, yellow and naked, walled up in her tomb for ever the dead Gomorrah. No fly hummed in the forbidden air, no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand, but in mockery of life, there were trees borne down by the Jordan in some ancient flood, and these grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of the long, silent years.”