A short distance south of Wady Zuweireh is Jebel Uschim, a range of hills running from north to south, a distance of seven miles, with an aver age elevation of 3oo feet, composed of a solid mass of rock-salt. The top and sides are covered with a thick coating of marl, gypsum, and gravel, pro bably the remains of the post-tertiary deposit up lifted upon the salt. The declivities of the range are steep and rugged, pierced with huge caverns, and the summit shows a serried line of sharp peaks. The salt is of a greenish-white colour, with lines of cleavage as if stratified, and its base reaches far beneath the present surface. The name of the range, Khashnz Usdazn, appears to preserve a memorial of the ancient guilty city of the plain.' At the mouth of Wady Zuweireh are some heaps of rough stones, and the shattered walls of a small tower, marked by De Saulcy as the remains of Sodom. That city may have stood in this region, but it requires some power of imagination to identify it with these insignificant ruins.
At the northern end of Jebel Usdum is the mouth of Wady Muhawat, which exhibits some very remarkable geological features. Its sides are cliffs of old limestone, showing here and there on their surface traces of post-tertiary marl ; but since the marl has been washed out, there has been a second filling in of an extraordinary char acter, which is only now in course of denudation. There are exposed on the sides of the wady, and chiefly on the south, large masses of bitumen mingled with gravel. These overlie a thick stratum of sulphur, which again overlies a thicker stratum of sand, so strongly impregnated with sulphur that it yields powerful fumes on being sprinkled over a hot coal. Many blocks of the bitumen have been washed down the gorge, and lie scattered over the plain below, along with huge boulders, and other traces of tremendous floods. . . . The layer of sulphurous sand is generally evenly distributed on the old limestone base, the sulphur evenly above it, and the bitumen in variable masses. In every way it differs from the ordinary mode of deposit of these substances as we have seen them elsewhere. Again, the bitumen, unlike that which we pick up on the shore, is strongly impregnated with sulphur, and yields an overpowering sulphurous odour ; above all, it is calcined, and beats the marks of having been subjected to extreme heat.' This discovery is exceedingly important ; and the remarks of Mr. Tristram upon it will be read with the deepest interest by all students of the Bible. Here, so far as I can judge, we have the only trace of anything approaching to volcanic action which we have met with in our careful exa mination of the northern, western, and southern shores. The only other solution of the problem— the existence of a bituminous spring when the sup ply of water was more abundant—would scarcely account for the regular deposition of sulphurous sand, and then of the sand with the bitumen super imposed. I have a great dread of seeking forced
corroborations of Scriptural statements from ques tionable physical evidence, for the sceptic is apt to imagine that, when he has refuted the wrong argu ment adduced in support of a Scriptural statement, he has refuted the Scriptural statement itself ; but, so far as I can understand this deposit, if there be any physical evidence left of the catastrophe which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, or of similar oc currences, we have it here. The whole appearance points to a shower of hot sulphur, and an irruption of bitumen upon it, which would naturally be cal cined and impregnated by its fumes ; and this at a geological period quite subsequent to all the diluvial and alluvial action of which we have such abundant evidence. The catastrophe must have been since the formation of the wady, since the deposition of the marl, and while the water was at its present level ; therefore, probably during the historic pe riod' (pp. 355-37).
The shore-line runs for nearly three miles south wards along the base of Jebel Usdum, and then sweeps sharply round to the east, leaving on the south a naked miry plain called Sabkah, ten miles long from north to south, by about six wide. It is in summer coated with a saline crust, but is so low that when the water is high a large section of it is flooded. Numerous torrent-beds from the salt range on the west, and from the higher ground of the Arabah on the south, run across it, convert ing large portions into impassable swamps. On its southern border the old diluvium terrace rises like a white wall to a height of more than 200 feet. It is only on getting dose to it that the sides are seen to be rent and torn into a thousand fantastic forms by winter torrents, and the wearing away of the softer deposits.
The Sabkah is bounded on the east by Wady Tufeileh, one of the principal drains of the Arabah, and containing a brackish perennial stream. Be yond it the ground rises in an easy slope to the foot of the Moab mountains, and is covered with dense thickets of reeds, tamarisk, acacia, retem, zyziphus, and other shrubs, intermixed with fertile fields, cultivated by the Ghawarineh Arabs, and producing abundant crops of wheat, maize, indigo, melons, and cucumbers. Tristram says : The place positively swarmed with birds in countless myriads. There were doves by the score on every bush, large and small (Turtur risorius and T. ./Egyptius), bulbuls, hopping thrush, shrikes, the gorgeous little sun-bird, resplendent in the light, and, once more, our new sparrow. The Abyssi nian lark, pipits, and wagtails luxuriated in the moist rills at our feet, which were fringed by drooping tufts of caper (Capparis zEgyptiaca) in full flower. All teemed with a prodigality of life' (p. 336).