=Its Eastern Bank.= On the eastern side the cliffs of Moab rise at some points almost sheer to the height of between twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet. These limestone hills are mottled with huge blotches of black limestone and basalt and are frequently capped with white, chalky rocks. They are cut by several important streams, which have worn deep canyons that extend back many miles into the Moabite hills. A few miles south of the northeastern end the Wady Zerka Ma'in flows into the sea. On its northern bank, near the sea, the famous baths of Callirrhöe burst from the rock. Farther south the River Arnon, cutting a canyon three thousand feet deep through the plateau of Moab, reaches the sea through a broad opening. Here a few scattered palms and acacias relieve the utter desolation of this eastern wall of rock. Still farther south the promontory of El-Lisan, The Tongue, as it is called by the natives, pushes out into the sea, extending to within three miles of the western shore. It is a bold mass of calcareous marl, forty to eighty feet in height, treeless and barren. In pleasing contrast with this barrenness is the oasis lying behind it, watered by the Wady el-Kerak. Here are found the four Bedouin villages which are the only towns along the coast of this desolate sea. =The Southern End.= At the southern end of the Dead Sea is a slimy mud marsh, low and malarial, covered with tropical thickets which are filled with the birds and the beasts of the southern clime. Farther south is the fertile Ghôr es-Safieh. In this little oasis, lying between the sea and the wilderness, a little wheat, barley, and tobacco are grown and a dense tropical vegetation abounds. Southward for a hundred and twelve miles to the Gulf of Akaba extends the Arabah,^{(39)} the continuation of the great rift of which the Jordan and the Dead Sea valleys are a part. Low sand-hills lie across the centre of this broad, shallow valley, making direct travel impossible. Sixty-five miles to the south the watershed is reached. This is six hundred and sixty feet above the level of the ocean, that is, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the Dead Sea. It is a land of stones, gravel, and sand,^{(40)} with only a few trickling springs--a lonesome, forbidding region where heat, dust, and the Bedouin rule supreme to-day as they have for thousands of years.