But all other historical associations with this district shrink into insignificance in comparison with that fearful catastrophe, when the Lord overwhelmed and destroyed the guilty cities with fire from heaven. When “Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord,”[96] he not only failed to take account of the licentiousness and “filthy conversation of the wicked,”[97] choosing temporal wealth at the peril of his soul’s welfare; but he knew not or cared not that the soil was one vast arsenal filled with instruments of destruction. The cities rested upon a bed of sulphur and bitumen. They were built and cemented from “the slime-pits of Siddim.”[98] When the longsuffering of God was exhausted and “the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was very great and their sin very grievous,” the hour of judgment came. The destruction may have been altogether miraculous. Or it may have been brought about by miracle working through natural agencies. The whole region is volcanic. Lightnings flashing from heaven, and the bursting forth of the subterranean fires, may have turned the whole plain into “a burning fiery furnace,” in which not the cities only but the very soil on which they stood were turned into one vast sea of flame. Imagination shudders at the awful spectacle when “the smoke of the country went up like the smoke of a furnace.” [Illustration: THE DEAD SEA NEAR MASADA.] The exact site of the cities thus destroyed cannot be decided with certainty. It has been commonly supposed that the Dead Sea covers the spot upon which they stood. Of this, however, we have no evidence in Scripture, and an examination of the geology of the district shows that it is impossible. Those who would locate them on the plain to the south of the Sea, urge in proof of their view an early and continuous tradition to this effect, the presence of a vast mountain of rock-salt which breaks up into isolated columns, the most remarkable of which has been called Lot’s wife, and the similarity of names, Usdum being identified with Sodom, Amrah with Gomorrah, and Zuweirah with Zoar. But the biblical narrative rather points to the conclusion that they stood on or near the northern shore where the “well-watered plain” of the Jordan, even to this day, attracts by its extraordinary fertility.[99] [Illustration: MAP OF THE DEAD SEA. SOUNDINGS IN FATHOMS.]