(18.) “Dead Sea, which is one hundred and fifty stadia wide.”—Josephus (_Wars_, etc., iv, 8, 3) wrote that the Dead Sea was 580 stadia in length, and 150 stadia wide. Seetzen (_Reiseberichte in Monatliche Correspondenz_, Berlin, 1854, xviii, 440), gives the width at 13-1/2 English miles, which Robinson reduces to 11-1/4 miles, at the same time observing that the water level rose from 10 feet to 15 feet; and that when he happened to be there in the month of May, the water had sufficiently risen to inundate, over the space of one mile, a salt lake on its southern shore. The indications of Josephus and of Schiltberger may have reference to the same season of the year.—BRUUN. (18A.) Captain Warren (_Underground Jerusalem_, 175) gives much new and valuable information on the Jordan and the valley of that river, and explains that the rise and fall in the level of the Dead Sea is caused by the fluctuations in the rush of water, the time of greater evaporations not coinciding with that of the freshets. This rise and fall might possibly be greater, were there no other regulating arrangement than evaporation; but at the southern end there is a vast tract of land, only submerged by a few feet (here is Robinson’s salt lake), and when this is covered the evaporation is great; and should the waters be unduly extracted, this becomes dry land. The Jordan overflows its banks at harvest time, which is simply owing to the harvest being early in that semi-tropical district, when the waters of the river are swollen by the waters of Hermon. The disparity in the dimensions of the Dead Sea, as noted by different authors, is here accounted for and explained. See Duc de Luynes’ _Voy. d’Exploration à la Mer Morte_, etc., Paris, 1874.—ED. (19.) “Christians usually bathe in the Jordan.”—Pilgrims, even in the days of Josephus and of Jerome, looked for salvation through baptism in the Jordan, and still may thousands be seen on Easter Monday, wending their way from Jerusalem to Jericho, performing the distance in five hours; two other hours bring them to the Jordan, and they assemble at the ruins of a church and monastery that were dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The church was equally a ruin in Daniel’s time, but the monastery and vaulted chapel near Hermon were in existence. It is clear that this mount could not have been either the great Hermon of the Lebanon, or the lesser Hermon which is situated in the middle of the plain of Jezreel to the south of Mount Tabor.