While it is not true, as the ancients believed, that birds drop dead in flying over it, neither birds nor beasts make their homes in the choking pit; and on its shores, always gray with a mixture of mud and salt, of course no green thing can grow. Indeed, there is little plant life anywhere round about, but as if in mockery there grow nearby what are known as apples of Sodom or Dead Sea fruit. This fruit looks like an orange, but it is bitter to the taste and filled only with fibre and dust. The official report of Lieutenant Lynch, of the United States Navy, who headed an expedition sent out by the government to explore the Dead Sea and the surrounding regions, is full of word pictures which might well have supplied material for the imagination of Dante. LIKE A VAT OF MOLTEN METAL The sea, yellow from the large amount of phosphorus in the water, is overhung in the early morning by a dense mist. This mist is made by the water steaming in the intense heat. It looks, however, like smoke above a great vat of molten metal "fused but motionless." After dark, when the night winds come down from the heights and go moaning through the gorges, the scene changes. "The surface becomes one wide sheet of phosphorescent foam, and the waves, as they break on the shore, throw a sepulchral light on the white skeletons of dead trees which have been washed from the woody banks of the Jordan and, lying half buried in the sand, are coated with gray salt from the muddy spray." On a portion of the land now covered by the lake, according to tradition, were the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and after their destruction these bitter waters flowed in and forever buried the scene of their wickedness from the sight of men. It seems probable that the region did once support a larger population. We know this to be true of other parts of the Orient which have since become desolate owing to the ravages of war, the change of climate, and the decay of Oriental civilization. And when we recall how the sinking of the great earth block that carried this land so far below the level of the sea forced lava up through the earth cracks, we can account for "the fire from heaven" that poured down upon the cities of the plain. Professor Huntington, who headed the Yale Expedition into Palestine in 1909, speaks of visiting the ruins of Suweim south of the Dead Sea and picking up bits of lava (the whole region abounds in evidences of volcanic action) while the sheik who acted as guide told the story of Sodom as the story of Suweim. The name Suweim, Professor Huntington thinks, may be a corruption of Sodom. Continuing, he says:[41] "The place is much greener than the other side of the valley, and in the days of Lot may have been 'like the garden of Jehovah'[42]; for in those times, as our studies of old levels of the Dead Sea quite clearly indicate, the climate of Palestine was probably decidedly moister than it is now.