Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/465

Rh, Mukadassi. Speaking of the town of Segor, near the salt region, he says that the proper translation of its name is "Hell"; and of the lake he says, "Its waters are hot, even as though the place stood over hell-fire."

In the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends burst forth more brilliantly than ever.

The first of these new travelers who makes careful statements is Fulk of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied King Baldwin to the Dead Sea and saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt region of Usdum, he makes no mention of the salt pillar: evidently he had fallen on evil times; the older statues had probably been washed away, and no new one had happened to be washed out of the rocks just at that period.

But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant experience of a far more famous traveler, half a century later—Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.

Rabbi Benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the Dead Sea, and develops to a still higher point the myth and legend of the salt statue of Lot's wife, enriching the world with the statement that it was steadily and miraculously renewed; that, though the cattle of the region licked its surface, it never grew smaller. Again a thrill of joy went through the monasteries and pulpits of Christendom at this increasing "evidence of the truth of Scripture."

Toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in Palestine a traveler superior to most before or since—Count Burchard, monk of Mount Sion. He had the advantage of knowing something of Arabic, and his writings show him to have been observant and thoughtful. No statue of Lot's wife appears to have been washed clean of the salt rock during his visit, but he takes it for granted that the Dead Sea is "the mouth of hell," and that the vapor rising from it is the smoke from Satan's furnaces.

These ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for Ernoul, who traveled to the Dead Sea during the same century, always speaks of it as the "Sea of Devils."

Near the beginning of the fourteenth century came a traveler of far wider influence—Sir John Maundeville.

In the various editions of the book ascribed to him, myths and legends of the Dead Sea and of the pillar of salt—old and new—burst forth into wonderful luxuriance. He brings news of a woman changed into an enormous dragon; of a monster who besought a monk to cast out the devil from him, and who had horns on his head, which horns were shown Maundeville by the monk