What is _now_ called the rose of Jericho is a species of _thlaspi_, according to Pococke. Mariti describes it as a small plant, having a number of stems which diverge from the earth; they are covered with few leaves but loaded with flowers, which appear red in the bud, but turn paler as they expand, and at length become white entirely. The flowers, he says, have a great resemblance to those of the elder, but have no smell. This can hardly be the plant of which Wisdom says, (Eccles. xxiv. 14.) “I was exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose plant in Jericho.” Page 162.—_The Dead Sea._] Of the ancient geographers, Strabo has given the fullest account of the Dead Sea, but strangely confounding it with the lake of Sirbonis, (xvi. p. 763. 4.) He particularly mentions the tradition of the country, that the cities had been destroyed by an earthquake and an eruption of sulphur and fire. It is not surprising that where there was so much to astonish, imagination should have exaggerated even the real wonders of the scene. What is mentioned in the text is agreeable to the observations of the latest travellers, except that it does not appear that those dark clouds of smoke rise from the surface, which the author has described, p. 133. What has given rise to the account has probably been the exhalations which often hang in a dense cloud over the stagnant waters. Volney, i. 182. 3. Irby and Mangles, p. 447. By far the most accurate account of the Dead Sea, is that which is given by the authors last referred to, in their unpublished Travels in Syria. Hitherto it had scarcely been explored by an European traveller on the southern side, and consequently its extent, in that direction, had been very much overrated. Including what they call its _back-water_, a shallow bay forming a prolongation of it on the south, (p. 454) it cannot exceed, they say, thirty miles at the utmost, though the ancients have assigned to it a length of from seventy-five to eighty. Nor is it possible that it should anciently have extended much further than it now does; because at the distance of about eight or ten miles to the south of the present limit of the backwater, a range of cliffs completely closes the valley of the Ghor, (p. 454.) This is therefore the utmost extent that the lake can have had in ancient times. The saltness and bitterness of the water mentioned in the text does not arise from a mixture of naphtha and asphaltes, but from the large quantities of the muriates of magnesia, soda, and lime, which it contains, amounting to a fourth part of the weight, according to Dr. Marcet’s analysis. Phil. Trans. 1807, p. 296. Hence the great specific gravity of the water, which has been exaggerated as if the human body could not sink in it. Tac. Hist. v. 6.