A DIP IN THE DEAD SEA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9465, 14 July 1891, Page 6

A DIP IN THE DEAD SEA.

Drowned in the Dead Sea! > I have never heard of such a fate overtaking anyone, and even a suicide would have to weight himself in order to go down. That, at all events, was the conclusion I came to one fine May morning many years ago, as I rode back to Jerusalem after a refreshing bathe in the bright blue waters of this great salt lake. * The buoyancy of the ocean is familiar to every swimmer, but the water of this huge basin is eight times as salt as that of the ocean. There is a story tlat the Emperor Vespasian ordered a criminal to be flung into the waves with his hands tied behind bis back, but the felon would not sink. And really I am very mich inclined to believe that the tale is true.

Why is the water so salt ? Well, though the Desd Sea is fed by the Jordan and other streams, it possesses no outlet. Now, as theserivers ail convey a certain quantity of this mineral into the lake, but none o t it escapes by outflowing channels (because, as I hare said, there are none), or by evaporation, it follows that, during untold ages the water has been of necessity getting salter and salter. It cannot help it, and the process is greatly assisted by the additional fact that almost more water is believed to evaporate every year than is poured into this inland sea in the same time. Thus the water vanishes slowly but surely; but the Lilt is left behind. Stripping among the reeds that line the northern shore the shore where old Jordan enters the lake, and which he has littered with dry, whitened driftwood, too suggestive ot blanching bones to be pleasant to bebold I was very soon breasting the waves of the Dead Sea. Speedily I realised that 1 was rolling in a vastly different element from what I had so often disported in at Yarmouth. Dip ! Why, I simply could net dive below; and when I got breast deep, I was lifted off my feet without ceremony, and swam about with as much provoking coolness as a big cork bung. This was swimming made easy with a vengeance, and yet, in a certain sense, it was swimming under difficulties, for most bathers are partial to an occasional duck down.'

Sea water is not a palatable beverage, but it is almost drinkable when compared with Dead Sea water. As luck would have it, I was not to leave the briny without completing my experience even in this respect. A false step plunges me head foremost on the waves, and ere I could fairly recover myself, I got a mouthfuljust one, for I didn’t want another—of what closely resembled Epsom salts, only more so. Fortunately I did not swallow the dose. When I reached the bank, my eyes and lips smarted; a sharp prickly sensation crept over my body; and an oily, saline crust was forming on my limbs and trunk. Without further ado, therefore, I went in for the severest towelling 1 had ever had in my life. 1 his vigorous rubbing speedily fret t 1 me from all discomfort except that for spoilt a week afterwards my lips were a trills sore and discoloured. By steady riding I arrived at Jerusalem the same night, having taken Jericho by the way, and none the worse for my strange bath. There is little that needs toning down in wfhat one reads about the Dead Sea. Its landscape is desolate, the silence of the Buehe is painful, and the almost total absence of life appalling. So only the supremest devotion to Art could have sustained Mr Holman Hunt, during the months of weary solitude which he spent by the shore of the “ Shipless Sea,” in the ycarlSs4 v while he was painting his fine and pathetic picture of “ The,Scapegoat.” Mr Buskin’s description of this famous spot is not generally known, and I will quote it as a faithful recital of the horrors of this region, that have, withal, a weird fascination for the beholder of them. “ Though the tradition that a bird cannot fly over this sea is an exaggeration, the air in its neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous," polluted by the decaying vegetable brought down by the Jordan in its floods; the bones of the beasts of burden that have died by the ‘way of the sea 5 lie like wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures, and bleached by the salt ooze, which, though tideless, rises and falls irregularly, swollen or wasted. Swarms of flies, fed on the carcases, darken an atmosphere, heavy at once with the poison oi the marsh and the fever of the desert; and the Arabs themselves will not encamp for a night amidst the exhalations ot the volcanichasm,”