This fertile tract touches the south-eastern shore of the sea, and continues along it as it trends north-east for some five miles to the mouth of Wady Nimeireh, becoming gradually narrower as the shore-line approaches the rocky sides of the mountains. The geological formation of this east ern range is different from the western. The front cliffs are red sandstone, apparently overlying hard crystalline limestone, and topped by more recent calcareous rock. Trap boulders, and fragments of greenstone and syenite, are strewn along the base.
Such are the southern shores of the Dead Sea. The great valley is here narrower than at the northern shore, not because of any contraction in the mountain-ranges, but arising from the ridge of Usdum, which was evidently thrown up from the bottom of the valley at some period subsequent to the formation of the Arabah. The projecting base of Jebel Usdum on the west, and the high fertile region of Es-Safieh on the east, contract the south ern end of the lake into the form of a semicircular bay about six miles in diameter. A few miles further north the shores on each side expand so much that the breadth of the sea is almost doubled. The general aspect of the shores is dreary and desolate in the extreme. The salt-incrusted plain, the white downs of the Arabah, the naked line of salt hills, the bare and scathed mountain-ranges on each side, all blazing under the rays of a vertical sun, form a picture of utter and stern desolation such as the mind can scarcely conceive.
On the northern side of Wady Nimeireh, a narrow strip of saline plain, very low and very barren, intervenes between the shore and the mountains. Here and there, at a little fountain, or at the mouth of a ravine, a clump of bushes or a cane-brake may be seen.
The Peninsula of elLisan, The Tongue,' is the most remarkable feature on the eastern shore. It juts out opposite the great ravine of Kerak. The neck connecting it with the mainland is a strip of low bare sand, measuring five miles across. In outline the peninsula bears some resemblance to the human foot ; the toe projecting northward, and forming a sharp promontory. Its length is about nine miles, and from the heel, or south-western point, to the southern shore line, is seven miles. The main body is a post-tertiary deposit, composed of layers of marl, gypsum, and sandy conglomerate, manifestly coeval with the great (Eluvial terrace, and corresponding with it in elevation. The top is a table-land, broad towards the south, but gra dually narrowing to a serried ridge at the northern end. It is white, and almost entirely destitute of
vegetation. The surface is all rent and torn by torrent-beds ; and the sides are worn away into pyramidal masses, resembling lines and groups of white tents. It is worthy of special note that in the wadys, and along the shores, pieces of sulphur, bitumen, rock-salt, and pumice-stone, are found in great profusion. Probably, if examined with care, geological phenomena similar to those in Wady Mahawat might be found on this peninsula, and some aciclitional light thus thrown upon the destruction of the cities of the plain. Poole says the soil appeared sulphurous ' (Yournal, R. G. S. xxvi. pp. 62-64).
The little plain at the mouth of Wady Kerak affords a striking contrast, in its thickets of ever greens and luxuriant corn-fields, to the arid deso lation of the adjoining peninsula.
The shore of the Dead Sea between the peninsula and the north-eastern angle has never be en thoroughly explored. Seetzen, Irby and Mangles, De Saulcy, and more recently the party of the Duc de Luynes, visited a few places ; and Lieutenant Lynch and his officers touched at several points. A few miles north of el-Lisfin the fertile plain, called Ghor el-Mezraah, terminates, and the mountains descend in sublime cliffs of red sandstone almost to the water's edge. Higher up white calcareous lime stone appears, and forms at this place the main body of the range. Basalt also appears in places, sometimes overlyin,g the limestone, as on the plain of Bashan, at others bursting through the sandstone strata in dykes and veins. The ravines of Mojib (Arnon) and Zerka Main appear like huge rents in the mountains. Near the mouth of the latter veins of gray and black trap cut through the sand stone, and a copious fountain of hot sulphurous water sends a steaming river into the sea, amid thickets of palms and tamarisks. This is Callirhoe, so celebrated in olden time for its baths. Between this point and the plain of the Jordan volcanic eruptions have produced immense flows of ba saltic rock, portions of which had been over flowed into the valley of the Jordan. Among other smaller basaltic streams three were found bordering on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea to the south of the little plain of Zarah (141. Lartet's paper to French Academy of Sciences ; see in yournal of Sae. Lit. July 1S65; p. 496).