The mountains of Judea form the range on which the observer stands as he looks down on the Lake Asphaltites. Less lofty and more unequal than the eastern chain, it differs from the other in its nature also; exhibiting heaps of chalk and sand, whose form, it is said, bears some resemblance to piles of arms, waving standards, or the tents of a camp pitched on the border of a plain. The Arabian side, on the contrary, presents nothing but black precipitous rocks, which throw their lengthened shadow over waters of the Dead Sea. The smallest bird of heaven would not find among these crags a single blade of grass for its sustenance; every thing announces the country of a reprobate people, and well fitted to perpetuate the punishment denounced against Ammon and Moab. The valley confined by these two chains of mountains displays a soil resembling the bottom of a sea which has long retired from its bed, a beach covered with salt, dry mud, and moving sands, furrowed, as it were, by the waves. Here and there stunted shrubs vegetate with difficulty upon this inanimate tract; their leaves are covered with salt, and their bark has a smoky smell and taste. Instead of villages you perceive the ruins of a few towers. In the middle of this valley flows a discoloured river, which reluctantly throws itself into the pestilential lake by which it is engulfed. Its course amid the sands can be distinguished only by the willows and the reeds that border it; among which the Arab lies in ambush to attack the traveller and to murder the pilgrim.[110] M. Chateaubriand remarks, that when you travel in Judea the heart is at first filled with profound melancholy. But when, passing from solitude to solitude, boundless space opens before you, this feeling wears off by degrees, and you experience a secret awe, which, so far from depressing the soul, imparts life and elevates the genius. Extraordinary appearances everywhere proclaim a land teeming with miracles. The burning sun, the towering eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all the pictures of Scripture are here. Every name commemorates a mystery,--every grotto announces a prediction,--every hill reechoes the accents of a prophet. God himself has spoken in these regions, dried up rivers, rent the rocks, and opened the grave. "The desert still appears mute with terror; and you would imagine that it had never presumed to interrupt the silence since it heard the awful voice of the Eternal."