Identifier: greatestwonderso00sing (find matches)
Title: Greatest wonders of the world
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Singleton, Esther, d. 1930
Subjects: Curiosities and wonders Landscapes
Publisher: New York, The Christian Herald
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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as to dis-tances and the continual tremulousness of the horizon.We also find here a band of Bedouins resembling veryclosely our friends of the desert in their shirts with longpointed sleeves floating like wings, and their little brownveils tied to the forehead with black cords, the twoends of which stand up on the temples like the ears of ananimal. Moreover, these shores of the Dead Sea, espe-cially on the southern side, are frequented by pillagers al-most as much as Idumaea. We know that geologists trace the existence of the DeadSea back to the first ages of the world ; they do not contest,however, that at the period of the destruction of the ac-cursed cities it must have suddenly overflowed, after somenew eruption, to cover the site of the Moabite pentapolis.And it was at that time that was engulfed all this Vale ofSiddim, where were assembled, against Chedorlaomer, thekings of Sodom, of Gomorrah, of Admah, of Zeboiim, andof Zoar (^Genesis xiv. 2, 3) ; all that plain of Siddim which
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\ THE DEAD SEA 21 was well watered everywhere, like a garden of delight(^Genesis xiii. lo). Since these remote times, this Sea hasreceded a little, without, however, its form being sensiblychanged. And, beneath the shroud of its heavy waters,unfathomable to the diver by their very density, sleep strangeruins, debris, which, without doubt, will never be explored ;Sodom and Gomorrah are there, buried in their darkdepths. At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by thesands we cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilo-metres, between two ranges of parallel mountains : to theeast, those of Moab, eternally oozing bitumen, which standthis morning in their sombre violet; to the west, those ofJudea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone, atthis moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores thedesolation is equally absolute; the same silence hovers overthe same appearances of death. These are indeed the im-mutable and somewhat terrifying aspects of the desert,—and o

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