Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/610

592 "Abraham, the friend of God, having come here one day with his mule to buy salt, the salt-workers impudently told him that they had no salt to sell, whereupon the patriarch said: 'Your words are true; you have no salt to sell,' and instantly the salt of this whole region was transformed into stone, or rather into a salt which has lost its savor."

Nothing could be more sure than this story to throw light into the mental and moral process by which the salt pillar myth was originally created.

In the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much more imposing scale that of the Due de Luynes. His knowledge of archaeology and his wealth were freely devoted to working the mine which Lynch had opened, and, taking with him an iron vessel and several savants, he devoted himself especially to finding the cities of the Dead Sea, and to giving less vague accounts of them than those of De Saulcy. But he was disappointed, and honest enough to confess his disappointment. So vanished one of the most cherished parts of the legend.

But worse remained behind. In the orthodox duke's company was an acute geologist, Monsieur Lartet, who in due time made an elaborate report, which let a flood of light in upon the whole region.

The Abbé Richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart of France by exhibiting some prehistoric flint implements as the knives which Joshua had made for circumcision. By a truthful statement Monsieur Lartet set all France laughing at him, and then turned to the geology of the Dead Sea basin. While he conceded that man may have seen some volcanic crisis there toward its end, and may have preserved a vivid remembrance of the vapor then rising, his whole argument showed irresistibly that all the phenomena of the region are due to natural causes, and that so far from a sudden rising of the lake above the valley within historic times, it has been for ages steadily subsiding.

Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies, and "blessed them altogether," there has never been a more unexpected tribute to truth.

Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted in Lynch's book, aided to undermine the myth among thinking men, for the background of the picture showed them other pillars of salt in process of formation; and the ultimate result of all these expeditions of the century was to spread an atmosphere in which myth and legend became more and more attenuated.

To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century, Seetzen, Robinson, and others had found that a human being could traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that the water gave forth no odors: that the fruits of the region