the northern coast consists of sand and blackened pebbles, and over its entire breadth are strewn quantities of drift-wood, such as willow twigs, broken canes, and poplar branches, thrown up by the violence of the waves when the sea is in commotion. Higher up is a terrace of bitumen, soft and slippery, and not unlike black clay. Neither shrub, flower, nor blade of grass, nor shell, can be found on all that lengthened beach. Illustration: DEAD SEA. Occupying the lowest portion of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea is forty miles long, from five to nine wide, and from two to 1308 feet deep. Its greatest depth is 2620 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and 5220 below the site of Jerusalem. Having its greatest width midway the sea, from Ain Jidy to the River Arnon, it is most shallow at its southern extremity, and deepest in its northern section, southwest from the thermal waters of Callirrhoe. Not many yards from the eastern cliffs it is more than one hundred and seventy fathoms deep. Geologically considered, the profound cavity containing this inland sea must be coeval with the conformation of the Jordan Valley on the north and the Valley of ’Arabah on the south. This mighty chasm must always have been the bed of a great lake, receiving the waters of the Jordan and the mountain torrents, together with those of the living springs which abound along the margin of the vale. Though much smaller then than now, both Abraham and Lot must have looked down upon its waters. Originally confined within its deeper bed, it has passed its primal limits by some convulsion or atmospheric phenomena as yet unknown. The great difference in its depth, from a third of a fathom to two hundred and eighteen fathoms, together with the record of Moses that the “plain of Jordan was well watered every where before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar,”[304] sufficiently indicates that the more shallow portions now overflown were once the rich green fields so tempting to the eyes of Lot.[305] According to authentic history, this vale was one of the cradles of the earliest civilization, not only containing the five royal cities that were destroyed, but also the cities of the Phœnicians, who, afterward removing to Tyre and Sidon, rose to greatness in art, science, and commerce. Its present desolation is due to natural causes, some of which are still apparent, and though its waters must always have been more or less salt, and its coasts must always have abounded in bitumen pits, yet these are not inconsistent with the richness of its plains, as attested by sacred and profane writers.