The shore-line now trends, with an easy curve, to the south-west, and then to the south, until it reaches the bold headland of Kas el-Feshkhah. So far it is flat and sandy, and the adjoining plain dreary and naked, save where, at long intervals, a little brackish spring rises, or a tiny streamlet flows, and there cane-brakes and shrubberies of tamarisk are seen. Kidges of drift mark the water-line, and are composed of broken canes and willow branches, with trunks of palms, poplars, and other trees, half imbedded in slimy mud, and all cov- eted with incrustations of salt.
A few miles north of Ras el-Feshkhah are some con- fused heaps and long ridges of loose unhewn stones and mounds of earth, to which De Saulcy has given the name Gumran. Other travellers, however, have been unsuccessful in discovering here any traces of a ruined city, or of the name which the French savant has given to it (Tristram, p. 249; Porter, Ihmdbuok, p. 203).
Kas el-Feshkhah is a bold headland of crystalline limestone, descending from a height of some 1500 feet ill broken cliffs into the deep sea. It bars all passage along the shore ; but Tristram by great exertions climbed round its face. It is cleft asunder by Wady en-Nar, the continuation of the Kidron. At the base of the cliff is a vein of bituminous limestone, largely used in the manufacture of little ornaments which are
sold to the pilgrims at Jerusalem. "The substance seemed to have been partially ejected in a liquid form, and to have streamed down the cliffs. It was generally mixed with flints and pebbles, sometimes covering the boulders in large splashes, and then, in the sea itself, formed the matrix of a very bard conglomerate of gravel anddints. When thrown into the tire, it burned with a sulphurous smell, but would not ignite at the flame of a lamp" (Tristram, p. 254).
South of Ras el-Feshkhah the cliffs retreat, leaving a plain along the shore, varj'ing from one to two miles in breadth, and extending to Ain-Terabeh, about six miles distant. The plain is an alluvial deposit with layers of gravel, and having spits of pure sand project- ing at intervals into the sea. It is partially covered with shrubberies of tamarisk, acacia, and retem (a spe- cies of broom ; the Genista I'cetum of Forskal, aboimding in the peninsula of Sinai), and towards the south with dense cane-brakes. The coating of alluvial marl which once covered it is now in many places worn away; and deep gullies rend it in all directions. Enough remains to show that its top, like that of the plains at the north- ern and southern ends of the lake, formed the old Ter- tiary level of the waters (ibid. p. 256).
In the plain is a copious brackish spring, with a tem- perature of 96° Fahr. Farther south is Ain-Terabeh, a small fountain, slightly brackish, oozing up from the sand a few feet from the shore. iSetween it and the cliflf's is a dense thicket abounding with birds and beasts : ducks, teal, pochard, thrush, bulbul: with swine, leop- ard, jackal, fox, hare, and porcupine (ibid. p. 273).
F"rom Ain-Terabeh to Ras Mersed (six miles) the coast plain is a mere strip, frequently interrupted by rocky headlands which dip into the waves. Bitumen is here abundant with pebbles imbedded. "In a little bay, just before reaching Wady Shukif, we were struck by a powerful sulphurous odor, and after some search foimd hot water bubbling through the gravel, at a tem- perature of 95° Fahr., only six inches from the sea. The smell of sulphur and rotten eggs was very strong, and while scooping in the gravel my hands became quite black, and my boots were covered with a yellow incrustation. Pebbles thrown in became incrusted with sidphur in a few minutes, and all the rocks in the sea,
i;, looking south.
SALT SEA
263
SALT SEA
which were here quite hot — of the temperature nf 80^ Fahr. — were covered with it. There must Ijc an enor- mous discharge of this mineral water under tlie sea, as the heat of the water extends for two hundreil yards, and the odor to a much greater distance. The ordinary tem- perature of the sea elsewhere was 62^" (;ibid. p. 279). On the south side of this spring is Jebel Shukif, a high, bold peak projecting into the sea. Two miles beyond it is the oasis of Engedi, a plain some two miles square, forming a delta to two glens which empty into it per- ennial streamlets of fresh water. These, with the "foun- tain of the kid" itself, make this spot a paradise in the midst of a dreary desert. See Engedi.
South of Engedi the plain becomes wider, but it is bare and desolate. The cliffs rise over it in broken masses of pale-brown limestone, divided by j-awning chasms, while the alluvial deposits along their base are as white as snow. Two miles southward a spring of fetid water (Birket el-Khulil) oozes up on the margin of the sea, having a temperature of 88^ Fahr. Other springs must exist beneath the waves, for the water near the shore is much hotter than elsewhere, and the whole surrounding air is tilled with fumes of sulphuret- ed hydrogen. No traces of trap-rock are anywhere seen ; but near Watly Khuderah are veins of crystalline limestone, and great quantities of flint, coated with ox- ide of iron. These De Saulcy and others mistook for lava torrents. The coast has the same general features as far as the hill and fortress of Sebbeh, the ancient Masada (q. v.). There, at the base of the hill, are the remains of a Koman camp; and beyond it the aspect of the plain is that of utter and even painful sterility. " Elsewhere the desolation is comparatively partial ; here it reigns supreme. The two miles of rugged slope that lay between our path and the sea are difficult to describe. They are f(jrmed of a soft, white, and very salt deposit, torn and furrowed by winter torrents in every direction, which have left fantastic ruins and cas- tles of olden shape, flat-topped mamelons, cairns, and every imaginable form into which a wild fancy could have moulded matter, standing in a labyrinth, north and south, before and behind us" (ibiil. p. 315). The Birket el-Khulil just alluded to is a shallow depression on the shore, which is tilled by the water of the lake when at its greatest height, and forms a natural salt- pan. After the lake retires the water evaporates from the hollow, and the salt remains for the use of the Arabs. They also collect it from similar though smaller spots farther south, and on the peninsula (Irby, June 2). One feature of the beach is too characteristic to escape mention — the line of drift-wood which encircles the lake, and marks the highest, or the ordinary high, level of the water. It consists of branches of brushwood, and of the limbs of trees, some of considerable size, brought down by the Jordan and other streams, and in course of time cast up on the beach. They stand up out of the sand and shingle in curiously fantastic shapes, all signs of life gone from them, and with a charred though blanched look very desolate to behold. Among them are said to be great numbers of palm-trunks (Poole, p. 69) ; some doubtless floated over from the palm-groves on the eastern shore already spoken of, and others brought down by the Jordan in the distant days when the palm flourished along its banks. The drift-wood is saturated with salt, and much of it is probably of a very great age.