Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/326

312 increases the effect of the glassy surface, glistening like a mirror so far down in the depths of the earth, and deepens the tranquil beauty of the mountain-guarded lake.

If we had been surprised at the beauty of the Dead Sea, not less so were we at the mountains of Moab, to which writers and painters have hardly done justice. Their apparent height is of course greatly increased by the depression of the sea beneath. Rising up so steeply, they cast a deep shadow on the waters which lie so far below. It is a grand chain of mountains, clothed with that rich purple tint which gives such beauty to the Apennines, as seen in the journey from Florence to Home. But these summits have associations such as do not belong to the Alban Hills, or any range seen from the Campagna: for it was here that Moses came to take his first and only view of the Promised Land, and to die. Scholars are divided as to the precise point of the chain which is Mount Nebo, and which is the peak of Pisgah; but it could not have been far away, for it was "over against Jericho," and so must have been within the sweep of the eye, as we look up from the shore of the Dead Sea. Other associations carry us back far before the death of Moses to the time when Abraham and Lot pastured their flocks in the plain whose cities were destroyed.

Of course superstition which is busy everywhere in Palestine, could not forego such an opportunity for legends and imaginary terrors as was furnished by a lake that was supposed to roll over buried cities. It has been said that the waters are so leaden that they lie in a dead calm, which no mountain breeze can stir into a ripple; and that birds cannot fly over a surface from which are supposed to rise poisonous exhalations. This latter fancy is not peculiar to the Dead Sea. In Ireland, a few miles out of Dublin, is a glen embosomed in the hills, enclosing a