The plain between the mountains and the mouth of the Jordan is in general well watered, and covered with luxuriant vegetation, and occasional thickets of tamarisk, retem, and acacia. At the ruins of Suweitneh M. de Saulcy found a copious hot spring, with a ruinous aqueduct (Voyage en Terre Sainte, i, 317). Along the shore pieces ot pumice-stone, lava, and bitumen, are found em bedded in the sand and mud, as if washed up by the waves ; and at this point are more distinct traces of volcanic action than elsewhere around the sea.
The Dimensions of the Dead Sea have never yet been taken with sufficient accuracy. Its length, from the mouth of the Jordan to the plain of Sab kah, is about forty geographical miles. It must be remembered that this varies considerably at differ ent seasons of the year, and in different years. When the sea is filled up by winter rains, the flat plain on the south is submerged for several miles. The annual rainfall too is not uniform in Palestine. Some years it is more than double what it is in others [PALEsTINE] ; and this produces a corre sponding effect on the volume of water in the sea, and consequently on its area. The sea attains its greatest breadth in the parallel of Engedi, where it measures about nine and three-fourths miles. The peninsula of Lisan divides the sea into two sections : that on the north is an elongated oval in form ; while that on the south is almost circular. The narrowest part of the channel between the penin sula and the mainland is not much more than two miles across.
The northern section is a deep regularly-formed basin, the sides descending steeply and uniformly all round, as well on the north and south as on the east and west. This is one of the most re markable features of the sea. Lynch ran seven lines of soundings across it from shore to shore, and found it deepest between Ain Terabeh and Wady Mojib, that is about the centre of the north ern section. From this point the depth decreased gradually towards Lisan on the south, and the mouth of the Jordan on the north. The greatest depth found by Lynch was 13o8 feet, but Lieu tenant Molynev records one sounding taken by him as 1350 feet. The deep part of the lake terminates at the peninsula. The greatest depth of the chan nel between Lisan and the western shore is only thirteen feet, and no part of the southern section was more than twelve feet in depth (Lynch, Official Report, ID. 43).
It appears that when the water is very low there are two practicable fords from the peninsula to the mainland ; one across the narrow channel, and the other running from the isthmus to the northern point of Jebel Usdum (Seetzen, Reisen, 358 ; Irby and Mangles, Travels, p. 14.0).
The depression of the Dead Sea is without a parallel in the world. From experiments made by boiling water, in 1S37, Messrs. Moore and Beke supposed the depression to be about 500 feet. In the following year Russegger with his barometer made it about i400 feet. Symonds by trigono metrical survey, in 1841, calculated the ciepression at 1312 feet ; and the level run by Dale, an officer of Lynch's expedition, gave a result of 1316 feet. A still more careful measurement has been recently made by the corps of English engineers, under Captain Wilson, with the following result :—` The levelling from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea has been performed with the greatest possible ac curacy, and by two independent observers, using different instruments ; and the result may be relied upon as being absolutely true to within three or four inches. The depression of the surface on the izth March IS65 was found to be 1292 feet, but from the line of driftwood observed along the border of the Dead Sea it was found that the level of the water at some period of the year—pro hably during the winter freshets—stands 2 feet 6 Inches higher, which would make the least depression 12S9'5 feet. Captain Wilson also learned, from inquiry among the Bedouins, and from European residents in Palestine, that during the early summer the level of the Dead Sea is lower by at least six feet : this would make the greatest depression to be as near as possible 1298 feet. . . . The most recent observation before that now given, by the Duc de Luynes and Lieutenant Vignes, of the French navy, agrees with our result in a very re.. markable manner, considering that the result was obtained by barometric observation, the depression given by them being 1286 feet on the 7th of June 1864, which at most differs only 12 feet from the truth, if we suppose the Dead Sea was then at its lowest' (Sir Henry James in the Athenaum).