A Wonderful Body of Water—Receives 20,000,000 Cubic Feet of Water per Day—Has no Outlet—Never Fills Up—In the Sea—Johnson’s Suggestion as to my Identity—Why One Cannot Sink—“Salt Sea”—Caught in a Storm—Danger of Death—Dreary Waste—Sea of Fire—Johnson’s Argument—New-Born Babe—Child Dies—Lot’s Wife—Her Past History and Present Condition—The Frenchman’s Book—Why the Sea is so Salt—Why it Never Fills Up—Sown with Diamonds—Origin of the Dead Sea—God’s Wrath—The Sodom Apple—The Sea an Emblem of Death. THE Dead Sea is, in many respects, the most wonderful body of water known to history. It is the lowest body of water on earth. Its surface is 1,300 feet lower than the surface of the Mediterranean, though the two seas are only sixty-five miles apart. It receives 6,000,000 tons, or 20,000,000 cubic feet, of water each day; and, while it has no possible outlet, it never fills up. It is no fuller now than it was a thousand years ago. This Sea of Death is wonderful for another reason. While it is forty-six miles long, thirteen miles wide, and while the water is 1,310 feet deep, I can walk across it and never get wet above my waist! I walk out into the sea for a mile or more—I walk not on the water, but in it. I fold my hands across my breast, stretch them out over the water, or lock them over my head, as I choose. I try to sink and can not. I never felt so much like a gourd in all my life. I sit down upon the water like a feather-bed. When tired I lie down. Some men lie when they stand up; but when I lie I am prostrated. I lie on the water, roll over, kick my feet in the air,—but all my attempts at sinking meet with an inglorious failure. Johnson says a man who will not sink in clear water must be of little weight in the world. Determined to make one more effort, I climb to a projecting rock from which I plunge head foremost into the sea. A moment later I am tossed into the air like a cork. Again I strike the water, and again rebound. I am, seemingly, about as heavy on the stomach of the Dead Sea as Jonah was on the stomach of a live whale. He was spewed up—so am I.