Coming up out of the water I find myself completely covered with a thin crust of salt. I hardly know who I am. Johnson suggests that I may be Lot’s wife. One thing is sure; I have a better complexion—at any rate I am whiter now than ever before. Johnson asks why it is that one can not sink in the Dead Sea. The specific gravity of the water is very great. This, of course, makes the water very buoyant, and renders it impossible for one to sink. The extra weight of the water is caused by the great amount of salt in the sea. It is a much easier matter to swim in the ocean than in a running stream, because the former is salt and, therefore, buoyant. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that only four per cent of ocean water is salt. Four per cent is enough to make the ocean very salt and buoyant. But of the Dead Sea water twenty-six to twenty-eight per cent is salt. It has, therefore, six or six and a half times as much salt as the same amount of ocean water has. Then how great its specific gravity! How buoyant its waters! How impossible to sink! [Illustration: THE DEAD SEA.] This is sometimes called the “Salt Sea,” and, while the name is quite brackish, it is not at all inappropriate; for, as has been said, “the water is a nauseous compound of bitters and Salts.” When I stiffen myself and stretch out on the waters, about half of my person remains above the surface. The water produces something of a stinging sensation; not severe enough, however, to be especially objectionable, unless you should chance to get some of it in your eyes. The buoyancy of the water makes its navigation both difficult and dangerous. Lieut. Lynch, in the following lines, gives us a vivid description of his experiences on this Sea of Death.