In the plain is a copious brackish spring, with a temperature of 96° Fahr. Farther south is Ain Terabeh, a small fountain, slightly brackish, oozing up from the sand a few feet from the shore. Between it and the cliffs is a dense thicket abound ing with birds and beasts : ducks, teal, pochard, thrush, bulbul ; with swine, leopard, jackal, fox, hare, and porcupine (Id. p. 273).
From Ain Terabeh to Ras Mersed (six miles) the coast plain is a mere strip, frequently interrupted by rocky headlands which dip into the waves. Bitumen is here abundant with pebbles embedded. In a little bay, just before reaching Wady Shukif, we were struck by a powerful sulphurous odour, and, after some search, found hot water bubbling through the gravel, at a temperature of 95° Fahr., only six inches from the sea. The smell of sulphur and rotten eggs was very strong, and while scooping in the gravel my hands became quite black, and my boots were covered with a yellow incrustation. Pebbles thrown in became incrusted with sulphur in a few minutes, and all the rocks in the sea, which were here quite hot— of the tempereture of 80° Fahr.—were covered with it. There must be an enormous discharge of this mineral water under the sea, as the heat of the water extends for 200 yards, and the odour to a much greater distance. The ordinary temperature of the sea elsewhere was 62°' (Id. p. 279). On the south side of this spring is Jebel Shukif, a high bold peak projecting into the sea. Two miles beyond it is the oasis of Engedi, a plain some two miles square, forming a delta to two glens which empty into it perennial streamlets Of fresh water. These, with the fountain of the kid' itself, make this spot a paradise in the midst of a dreary desert. [ENGEDI.] South of Engedi the plain becomes wider, but it is bare and desolate. The cliffs rise over it in broken masses of pale brown limestone, divided by yawning chasms, while the alluvial deposits along their base are white as snow. Two miles south ward a spring of fetid water oozes up on the margin of the sea, having a temperature of 88° Fahr. Other springs must exist beneath the waves, for the water near the shore is much hotter than elsewhere, and the whole surrounding air is filled with fumes of sulphuretted hydrogen.
On this plain four distinct terraces are visible. The highest is nearly 300 feet above the present sea level. Down along the beach are traces of
three or four others, like tidal-marks, as if very re cently left, wbich had washed into the post-tertiary marl, at heights varying from fifteen to forty-five feet above the actual water-line' (Tristram, p. 3o2.). No traces of trap-rock are anywhere seen ; but near Wady Khuderah are veins of crystalline lime stone, and great quantities of flint, coated with oxide of iron. These De Saulcy and others mis took for lava torrents. The coast has the same general features as far as the hill and fortress of Sebbeh, the ancient Masada. There, at the base of the hill, are the remains of a Roman camp ; and beyond it the aspect of the plain is that of utter and even painful sterility. Elsewhere the deso lation is comparatively partial, here it reigns supreme. The two miles of rugged slope that lay between our path and the sea are difficult to de scribe. They are formed of a soft, white, and very salt deposit, torn and furrowed by winter torrents in every direction, which have left fantastic ruins and castles of olden shape, flat-topped mamelons, cairns, and every imaginable form into which a wild fancy could have moulded matter, standing in a labyrinth, north and south, before and behind us ' (Id. p. 313).
Farther south the shore recedes, forming a bay some eight miles in length, the water in places almost washing the base of the cliffs. One wild glen, called Um Baghek, breaks through the mountains, and sends out a tiny stream with a dense fringe of evergreens. Not far from it is another hot sulphur spring, which spreads its suffocating odours around. On the south the bay is bounded by the oasis of the Wady Zuweireh—a plain of some extent, sprinkled with tamarisks and acacias, and torn in all directions with torrent beds, through which the winter rains and the streamlets from numerous sulphurous and brackish springs find their way to the sea. The cliffs and peaks which rise over the oasis appear from a distance to exhibit traces of volcanic action, but closer in spection proves that there are no igneous rocks here or elsewhere along the western shore. Veins of ruddy limestone, blocks of ironstone, and mul titudes of nodules of black flint, look like trap dykes and craters in the distance. There are, how ever, a few cinders and scoria' observable here and there along the shore.