Though the receptacle of the perennial Jordan and of springs that never fail, and though without an outlet its mighty caldron is never filled to overflowing, and its waters have but a slight perceptible rise and fall. Situated 1312 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and shut in by high barren mountains of limestone, its supply never exceeds the demand made by its rapid evaporation. With the Gulf of Akaba thirty-five feet above the Mediterranean, it is inconceivable how the Dead Sea could ever have flowed southward over the plain of ’Arabah to mingle its waters with those of the Red Sea; and this impossibility is the more apparent from the fact that the waters of ’Arabah flow into the Dead Sea from a water-shed midway between the two seas. Such curious facts at once disprove the hypothesis either that there is a subterranean outlet on the south, or that, prior to the fall of Sodom, the waters of the Jordan flowed in a river channel through the “Vale of Siddim” to mingle with those of the Indian Ocean. Evaporation was then, as now, the only outlet. With the exception of a few semicircular plains, the “Salt Sea” covers the entire breadth of the vale, in many places the mountains dipping into the waters without a footpath along the shore. At the northwest corner there is a neck of land extending into the lake, which, when the water is low by increased evaporation, is a peninsula, but at high water its extreme point is a small island, covered with ruins of great antiquity, consisting of heaps of unhewn stones, some of which retain their original position in the foundation of a building whose history is unknown; and at the southeast angle of the sea, near the ravine of Kerak, is a low, broad promontory or cape, extending four miles to the north up the centre of the lake. Wherever a brackish fountain trickles down the hill-side, and flows over those little plains formed by the receding mountains, there shrubs grow, flowers bloom as in more genial climes, birds sing sweetly as in more enchanting bowers, and the Arab, with the traveler, pitches his tent, unaffected by the fancied deadly exhalations from the poisonous sea, which only exist in the stories of poet and romancer.