The travellers landed at El Akabah on the Red Sea, and went with a small Arab caravan to El Khalil, the ancient Hebron. The route they followed had never before been trodden by a European. It led through a wide, flat valley terminating at the Dead Sea; a valley through which the waters of the Dead Sea were supposed at one time to have flowed towards the Red Sea. This hypothesis was shared by Burckhardt and many others who had only seen the district from a distance, and who attributed the cessation of the drainage to an upheaval of the soil. The heights, as taken by the travellers, showed this hypothesis to be altogether erroneous. In fact from the lower end of the Persian Gulf the country presents a continuous ascent for two or three days' march to the point called by the Arabs the Saddle, from thence it begins to sink and slopes down towards the Dead Sea. The Saddle is about 2100 feet above the sea-level, at least that was the estimate given a year later by Count Bertou, a Frenchman, who visited those localities at that time. On their way down to the Bituminous Lake, Schubert and his companions took some other barometrical observations, and were very much surprised to find their instrument marking ninety-one feet _below_ the Red Sea, the levels gradually decreasing in height as they advanced. At first they thought there must be some mistake, but finally, the evidence was too strong for them, and it became proved beyond a doubt that the Dead Sea could never have emptied its waters into the Red Sea for the very excellent reason that the level of the former is very much lower than that of the latter. The depression of the Dead Sea is very much more noticeable when Jericho is approached from Jerusalem. In that case the way lies through a long valley with a very rapid slope, all the more remarkable as the hilly plains of Judea, Perae, and El Harran are very lofty, the latter rising to a height of nearly 3000 feet above the sea-level. The appearance of the country and the testimony of the instruments were in such contradiction to the prevalent belief, that Messrs. Erdl and Schubert were very unwilling to accept the results obtained, which they attributed to their barometer being out of order and to a sudden disturbance of the atmosphere. But on their way back to Jerusalem the barometer returned to the mean height it had registered before they started for Jericho. There was nothing for it then but to admit, whether they liked it or not, that the Dead Sea was at least 600 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, an estimate, as later researches showed, which fell one-half short of the truth. This, it will be admitted, was a fortunate rectification, which would have considerable influence, by calling the attention of _savants_ to a phenomenon which was soon to be verified by other explorers.