Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/544

 528 PALAESTIXA. which, with its deep fissures, the earthqualces to which it is subject, and the sahne sulphureous springs, which have a temperature of 46° cent., at- test the volcanic oriijin of this depression. " The other substances met witii in the neighbour- hood are no less corroborative of the cause assigned. On the shore of the lake Mr. Maundrell found a kind of bituminous stone, which I infer from his description to be analogous to that of Kadusa in Sicily. " it would appear that, even antecedently to the eruption mentinned in Scripture, bitumen-pits abounded in the plain of Siddim. Thus, in the ac- count of the battle between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and some of the neighbouring princes (Gen. xiv.), it is said, ' And the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits,' which a learned friend as- sures me ought to be translated fountains of bitumen. " But besides this volcanic eruption, which brought about the destruction of the cities, it would appear that the very plain itself in which they stood was obliterated, and that a lake was formed in its stead. This is collected not only from the apparent non- e.Kistence of the valley in which these cities were placed, but likewise from the express words of Scripture, where, in speaking of the wars which took place between the kings of Sodom and Go- morrah and certain adjoining tribes, it is added that the latter assembled in the vale of Siddim, which is the Salt (j. e. the Dead) Sea. "It is therefore supposed that the lake itself occu- pies the site of this once fertile valley, and that it was produced by the waters of the Jordan, which, being without an outlet, would fill the hollow until the surfece over which they spread themselves proved sufficiently large to cause the loss arising from evaporation to be equivalent to the accessions it received from the rains and snows of the mountains in which it took its rise. " This hypothesis assumes that previously to the existence of the Dead Sea the Jordan must have had an outlet, either into the Mediterranean or into the Eed Sea; and accordingly when it was discovered by Burckhardt, that there actually existed a longi- tudinal valley, parallel to the course which the Jor- dan took before it reached the Dead Sea, as well as to the larger axis of that expanse of waters, running from north to south, and extending from the south- ern termination of the Dead Sea to the extremity of the gulf of Akaba, it was immediately concluded that this valley was in fact the former bed of the Jordan, which river, consequently, prior to the ca- tastrophe by which the Dead. Sea was produced, bad flowed into this arm of the Red Sea. " Briefly, then, to recapitulate the train of phae- noniena by which the destruction of the cities might have been brought about, I would suppose that the river Jordan, prior to that event, continued its course tranquilly through the great longitudinal valley called El-Arabah, into the gulf of Akaba; that a shower of stones and sand from some neighbouring volcano first overwhelmed these places; and that its eruption was followed by a depression of the whole of the region, from some point ajjparently inter- mediate between the lake of Tiberias and the moun- tains of Lebanon, to the watersiied in the parallel of 30°, which occurs in the valley of El-Arabah above mentioned. I would thence infer that the waters of the Jordan, pent up within the valley by a range of mountains to the east and west, and a barrier of elevated table-land to the south, could find no outlet, PALAESTINA. and consequently by degrees formed a lake in its most depressed portion; which, however, did not occur at once, and therefore is not recorded by Scripture as a part of the catastrophe (see the passage in Ezekiel, xlvii. 8, indicating, if it be interpreted literally, the gradual manner in which the Dead Sea was formed, and likewise perhaps the existence of a tradition that its waters once had their exit in the Red Sea), though reference is made in another pas- sage to its existence in what was before the valley of Siddim. j " If, as Robinson states, extensive beds of salt occur ■ immediately round its margin, the solution of the contents of these by the waters of the lake wouhi account for their present composition, its saltness increasing nearly to the point of saturation, owing to the gradual accession of waters from above, which, on evaporating, would leave their salt behind; whilst the bitumen might either have existed there pre- viously as a consequence of antecedent volcanic erup- tions, or have been produced by the very one to which reference is here made. '• I do not, however, see what is gained by at- tributing the destruction of the.se cities, as some have preferred to do, to the combustion of these beds (.f bitumen, as the latter could have been inflamed by no natural agent with which we are acquainted except the volcano itself, which therefore must in any case be supposed instrumental, and, being invoked, will alone enable us to explain all the facts recorded. " It must at the same time be confessed that much remains to be done before this or any other expla- nation can be received as established; and I am dis- appointed to find that amongst the crowds of travellei-s who have resorted to the Holy Land within the last twenty years, so few have paid that attention to the physical structure of the country which alone could place the subject beyond the limits of doubt and controversy. " The geologist, for instance, would still find it worth his while to search the rocks which bound the Dead Sea, in order to discover if possible whether there be any crater which might have been in a state of eruption at the period alluded to; he should ascertain whether there are any proofs of a sinking of the ground, from the existence of rapids anywhere along the course of the river, and whether south of the lake can be discovered traces of the ancient bed of the Jordan, as well as of a barrier of lava stretching across it, which latter hypothesis Von Buch, I per- ceive, is still inclined to support; nor should he omit to examine whether vestiges of these devoted cities can be found, as some have stated, submerged beneath the waters, and buried, hke Pompeii, under heaps of the ejected materials. " VI. Historical Geography. 1 . Earliest period. — The first notice we l)ave of the inhabitants of Palestine is in the days of Abraham's immigration, when the Canaanite was in the land, from whom it received its earliest appel- lation, " the land of Canaan." (^Gen. xii. 5, 6. xiii. 7, 12, &c.) The limits of their country are plainly defined in the genealogy of Canaan; but its distri- bution among the various families of that patriarch is nowhere clearly stated. " Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Ainorite, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite : and afterwards were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. And