Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/252

212 himself with topography and hydrography. Then the daring explorer, abandoning himself to the current of the Jordan, descended the river as far as the Dead Sea, which he likewise studied from the hydrographical point of view. Unfortunately, Molyneux had been so exhausted by the unhealthy and torrid climate of the Ghôr, that he died almost immediately after having rejoined his ship at Beyrout, before having been able to put in order the materials which he had collected. This death was so much the more regrettable that the observations of Molyneux on the depth of the Lake of Tiberias—to speak only of the subject which occupies us—constituted the first scientific documents collected on the question; they have also remained the only ones until to-day, as we shall see.

Replying by precise facts to the old legends, which were prevalent as to the considerable depth of the Lake of Tiberias, Molyneux, by a series of soundings made in all directions, demonstrated that in no part did the depth of the lake exceed 120 to 156 feet, or 36m·55 to 47m·55.

Lieutenant Lynch, who, the following year, at the head of an American mission, performed exactly the same journey as Molyneux, descending like him the Jordan as far as the Dead Sea, only crossed over the Lake of Tiberias at the southern mouth of the river, deferring until his return the hydrographic observations which he proposed to make there. As too often happens, these projects were never put into execution, and the American expedition re-passed the lake without stopping there. In his account. Lynch limits himself to saying that the greatest known depth of the lake is 27·5 fathoms or 165 feet (50m·30). This number is evidently inspired by the observations of Molyneux; only in consequence of a typographical error they have printed 165 instead of 156, inverting the order of the two last figures.

Some years later Van de Velde's large map, "Map of the Holy Land," appeared; in the Lake of Tiberias is shown a series of fifteen soundings, varying from 10 fathoms (60 feet, or about 18 metres) to 26 fathoms (156 feet, or about 47 metres); these soundings, Van de Velde himself tells us, have been reported after Molyneux. In the face of the frankness of this indication, above all in the presence of the stated fact that Lynch never made a single cast of the lead in the Lake of Tiberias, it is difficult to