Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/244

 172 like milk; and for this reason it is distinguished by a long track in the Dead Sea. Now, the Sea of Gennesar, otherwise called the Sea of Galilee, is surrounded by large woods, and is a hundred and forty stadia in length. Its water is sweet and fit to drink; for it receives no mud or other coarse substance from any marshy pools, but is surrounded on all sides by a sandy shore, and has in its neighbourhood many pleasant towns. On the east lie Julias and Hippo; on the west is Tiberias, famous for its salubrious hot springs: the different kinds of fish which it contains are better, both in taste and in appearance, than those which are found in the other lake.

CHAPTER XII.

Dead Sea is five hundred and eighty furlongs in length, and extends as tar as the Zoari in Arabia. Its breadth is one hundred and fifty furlongs, as far as the neighbourhood of Sodom. For it is certain that it flowed also out of some salt-pits, after the burning of Sodom and Gomorrha and the adjacent cities. But it appears to those who look at it from the top of Mount Olivet, that the collision of the weaves causes salt of a very strong kind to be thrown up, which, when dried in the sun, is collected, and is of considerable service to many of the neighbouring nations. Salt is said to be produced in a different manner from this in a certain mountain of Sicily, where large blocks of the strongest and most useful salt are hewn out of the earth: this is called rock-salt. The name of the Dead Sea is derived from this circumstance—that it does not sustain any kind of living thing; for there are neither fish in its depths, nor water-