The sinister aspect of the valley of the Jordan, especially at the embouchure of the river, impresses itself on the mind of every spectator. There the traveller finds the path narrowed between two abrupt gigantic walls. On the right rises the Arabian chain, black and perpendicular; on the left, the Judæan range, less elevated, more irregular, and resembling a dismantled ruin. "The valley comprised between these two chains," says the Père Laorty-Hadji, "exhibits a soil closely resembling the bed of a sea which has long been dry. You can discern but a few stunted trees. Ruined towns and castles appear in the distance. At the moment of flinging itself into the Dead Sea, the Jordan itself, traversing a muddy soil, changes its physiognomy and colour. It seems to drag reluctantly, towards the motionless lake, a burden of slow and tawny waters. The shores of the Dead Sea are low on the east and west; to the north and south high mountains enclose it." "These mountains, separated by a formidable cleft, exhibit their beds of red sandstone, overlain by a thick stratum of compact chalk, interrupted by silicious fragments. One is surprised not to see a volcanic crater, when all about, in this convulsed site, the action of fire is visible--the violent, bitter struggle of the two Neptunian and Plutonian principles, which, during the geological eras, contended for the empire of the world. One might say that here the two antagonistic forces exhausted themselves, that they have equally lost their potency; so much so, that at the close of the combat all has sunk into the silence and immobility of death. And who knows if the volcanic crater, whose absence at first astonishes the observer, is not the Dead Sea itself? Is it unreasonable to admit that after the upheaval of the mountains which inclose it, and which a terrible explosion of subterranean fire will have separated, the neighbouring waters were precipitated into and swallowed up in the yawning gulf which they still fill to-day?... This hypothesis is so much the more probable, because in this fire-scathed region the lake affords manifest indications of an igneous travail even now accomplishing itself sullenly in the bowels of the globe. We know that its name of Lake Asphaltites is due to the semi-fluid bituminous matter which constantly rises to its surface and accumulates on its shores. With the vapours exhaled by this bitumen under the influence of heat, mingle sulphurous and ammoniacal exhalations, which render the atmosphere of the Dead Sea dangerous to breathe."[46]