lava." Further north, about the hot springs of Callirrhoe, "veins of gray and black trap cut through the sandstone. Between this point and the plain of the Jordan volcanic eruptions have produced immense flows of basaltic rock, portions of which had been overflowed into the valley of the Jordan. Among other smaller basaltic streams, three were found bordering on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea to the south of the little plain of Zarah." 2

A series of hot springs on either side of the Dead Sea still attests the presence of internal fires. In the Wady Ahsy southeast of the sea, in Wady Hamâd, north of Kerek, these springs are found. The hot springs of Callirrohe, further north, discharge into the sea a heated stream twelve feet wide and ten inches deep, rushing on with great velocity. On the western side of the Dead Sea two hot springs are found above Engedi, about six miles apart, one "a copious fountain," the other discharging "an enormous quantity of hot water into the sea." South of Engedi, at the distance of two miles, are hot springs on the beach and under the water. Further south, near Um Baghek, is "another hot sulphur spring, which spreads its suffocating odors around." And again in the fords from the western shore to the promontory of el-Lisan are found hot springs welling up from the bottom of the sea.

At Gerasa, cast of the Jordan, and again at Jermuk, southeast of the Sea of Gallilee hot springs occur, the last, ten in number, "fountains of immense size," and of a high temperature. On the western shore of Gennesaret are the famous hot springs of Tiberias, varying from 136° to 144° of Faranheit; after a course of many rods, discharging a stream of hot water into the lake painful to the hand and foot immersed in it. The copious salt and tepid fountains of Tabighal above Khân Minyeh, are also worthy of special consideration in this connection.

"The northern shore of the lake is covered with basalt, lava, and other volcanic productions." Safed, near the lake,

1 Expedition to the Dead Sea, p. 369.

2 Journal of Sacred Literature, July 1865, p. 496.

was entirely destroyed by an earthquake in the year 1837, and many thousands perished in the ruins. Not less than three extinct volcanoes are found in its immediate vicinity. The great fountain, Tel el-Kady, twenty-five miles further north, gushes out from the crater of an extinct volcano. Two or three miles northwest of this fountain the ground for a great distance is strewed with large basaltic boulders, "volcanic bombs," which must at some times have been discharged from the tremendous battery of a volcano. At the termination of this great crevasse near Hasbany are found. mines of bitumen, brilliant as the purest obsidian. Trap rocks and a hot spring are also reported in the same vicinity.

The whole of ancient Bashan is volcanic. East of the Jordan above the Sea of Gallilee and the lake Huleh, these volcanic indications are exceedingly impressive. "The phlegean fields, and all that can present an idea of volcanic destruction, form but a feeble image of the frightful country through which I passed this day. From the bridge of Jacob to Sassa, the whole ground is composed of nothing but lava, basaltic, and other volcanic productions; all is black, porous, or carious. It was like travelling in the infernal regions.

"Besides these productions which cover the country, either in detached masses or in large strata, the surface of the ground is entirely covered with loose volcanic stones, from three or four inches in circumference to a foot in diameter, all equally black, porous, or carious, as if they had just come out of the craters. But it is particularly at the approaches to Sassa that the traveller meets with groups of crevices and volcanic mounds, of so frightful a size that he is seized with horror, which is increased if he allows his imagination to wander to the period when these masses were hurled forth with violence from the bowels of the earth. The holes and crevices, which are to be met with continually, contain water as black as ink, and almost as fetid. There are evident signs that all this country was formerly filled with volcanoes, for we beheld several small craters in traversing the plain." "1

1 Ali Bey's Travels, Vol. ii. pp. 24, 25.

"The molten lava seems to have issued from the earth through innumerable pores, to have spread over the whole plain, and then to have been rent and shattered in the act of cooling." 1

The Lejah, the ancient Argob, is described as an "ocean of basaltic rocks, and tossed about in the wildest confusion, and intermingled with fissures and crevices in every direction." Black basaltic rocks were the building materials of the ancient inhabitants of Bashan. Whole cities are found there, totally deserted, in which the houses are as fresh and entire as when occupied by the first inhabitants two or three thousand years since. The walls are built of large squared blocks of basalt, almost as hard as iron; the flat roof is composed of long slabs of the same material, neatly hewn and closely fitted; the doors are also stone, from six inches to a foot in thickness, and hung on pivots projecting above and below, and working in sockets in the lintel and threshold, like all the gates in Syria."2 This basalt, Burckhardt remarks, "forms a principal feature in the mineralogy of eastern Syria."

An Arabian author of a large geographical lexicon asserts that between the Haurân and Bab-el-Mandeb there are no less than twenty-eight distinct volcanic regions, and gives a specific description of each locality, with the indications of its volcanic character.

Thus for one thousand five hundred miles along the entire line of this stupendous fissure, from the straits of Bab-elMandeb to the mountains of Lebanon, the margin and the bed of this crevasse are marked with impressive, appalling indications of those tremendous agencies which God must have summoned into action when in times past he arose to shake terribly the earth. At some remote period, by some stupendous convulsion, we must believe that this immense fissure was formed, rending the broad isthmus by which Asia

1 Porter's Hand-Book, Vol. ii. p. 465.

2 Hand-Book of Syria and Palestine, p. 501.

8 Jâkûts in Wetzstein's Reisebericht über Haurân u. die Trachonen seit, 98. VOL. XXIV. No. 94. 33

and Africa were originally united, and opening up between them the great gulf of the Red Sea. By the Peninsula of Sinai this sea is divided into two divisions, one of which runs up the Gulf of Suez, until it is lost in the sands south of the adjacent parts of the Mediterranean Sea. The other division takes the direction of the Ailanitic Gulf. Then succeeds the deep, barren bed of the Arabah, the deeper basin of the Dead Sea, and the valley of the Jordan, to its highest source between the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.

The mighty convulsions and throes of the earth which formed a rent in its surface of such vast dimensions, running the last hundred miles almost parallel to the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, and terminating fifteen or twenty miles from the coast, might be expected to wrench violently the intervening strata and cause a transverse fissure towards the sea. Here our theory is true to fact. The great chain of Mount Lebanon at this point is cleft by a transverse fissure, which opens through the deep, dark masses of the mountain a passage for the Litâny, the ancient Leontes. It is a wild gorge, between cliffs "from eight hundred to twelve hundred feet in height," sometimes perpendicular, always precipitous. For some two hundred and fifty feet it is only from six to twelve feet in width. At one place it is barely three feet, so that one on the brink may reach with his hand the opposite precipice. At times the branches of the trees from either side unite and form a canopy over the dark abyss. Then again the cliffs form an eyry, where the eagles securely rear their young.

But the most majestic part of this wonderful chasm is near the entrance, where the banks, a thousand feet in height, and parted only just enough for the passage of the stream, exactly correspond in the strata and cleavages of the rocks. No depression or breakage of the margin is noticed the most of the way as you approach the brink of the chasm. The undulations of the surface on each side are the same, so that the unwary traveller would suppose the whole to be one continuous, unbroken surface. At another place a large

fragment or boulder has fallen in and lodged in the cleft of the rock, forming a natural bridge one hundred and five feet above the stream. The whole combination forms a scene inexpressibly wild, majestic, sublime. Here the Litâny, as if startled from its quiet course between Lebanon and AntiLebanon, by some terrible catastrophe dashes wildly up against the mountain, and tears on through the wild chasm several miles, leaping, roaring, writhing, as if in agony to escape from this devouring abyss to rest in the still waters of the Mediterranean.

Precisely what may be the relation of these volcanic indications along the entire line of this vast fissure in the earth, to the theory under consideration, we undertake not to determine, but respectfully submit them to the attentive consideration of the reader. May not the great depression of the Dead Sea indicate the result of volcanic action subsequent to the formation of the great crevasse by which a deeper abyss was formed as a fit receptacle for the waters of this mysterious sea of death? The vast mountain of salt, the bitumen of the sea, the bituminous rocks, the lava, scoriae, brimstone, and saline deposits upon the shores remain impressive memorials of the terrible scene when "the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven." "The bottom of the sea," says Lieutenant Lynch, "consists of two submerged plains, an elevated and a depressed one; the last thirteen, the former about one thousand three hundred feet below the surface. Through the northern, the largest and the deepest one, in a line corresponding with the bed of the Jordan, is a ravine, which again seems to correspond with the Wady elJeib, a ravine within a ravine, at the south end of the sea."

Between the Jabbok and this sea, we unexpectedly found a sudden break-down in the bed of the Jordan. If there be a similar break in the watercourses to the south of the sea, accompanied with like volcanic characters, there can scarce be a doubt that the whole Ghôr has sunk from some extraordinary convulsion, preceded most probably by an eruption