Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica/Asphaltites

ASPHALTITES, a Lake of Judea, near Jerusalem, so called from the Bitumen which floats upon its surface; and equally well known under the name of the Dead Sea;—a name associated with many fables, and derived from a long standing belief, that no creature could live in its waters, or within the reach of its pestiferous exhalations.

The reader will find the substance of the ancient accounts, and those of the earlier Travellers in regard to this famous Lake, in the article under its name in the Encyclopædia; we shall therefore confine ourselves in this place, to such authentic particulars, as have been furnished by the observations and inquiries of those who have recently visited the Holy Land.

This Lake is supposed to be from sixty to seventy miles in length, and from ten to twenty in breadth. It is curved like a bow, and placed between two ranges of mountains, of lofty and majestic appearance. But the grandeur of its features is blended with an air of sadness and desolation, which seems to accord well with the marvellous stories associated with its name.

Some of these fables have an obvious foundation in its physical properties. Its taste is remarkably bitter, saline, and pungent; and hence has arisen the notion of its pestiferous vapours and deadly influence. We are told even by Volney, that its waters are destructive both of animal and vegetable life; but he denies that its vapours have any deadly quality, for swallows, he says, are often seen to skim its surface without injury. M. De Chateaubriand, who visited its shores in 1807, with an imagination abundantly disposed to the marvellous, has given the first decided testimony that it abounds with fish. He reached the Lake when it was already dark, and passed the night among some Arab tents. “About midnight,” says he, “I heard a noise upon the Lake, and was told by the Bethlehemites who accompanied me, that it proceeded from legions of small fish which come out and leap about on the shore.” This interesting Traveller speaks in the following terms of its saline properties: “The first thing I did on alighting was to walk into the Lake up to my knees, and to taste the water. I found it impossible to keep it in my mouth. It far exceeds that of the sea in saltness, and produces upon the lips the effect of a strong solution of alum. Before my boots were completely dry, they were covered with salt: our clothes, our hats, our hands, were in less than three hours impregnated with this mineral.”

The common story, that nothing will sink in it, is to be ascribed to the extraordinary density of its waters. Bodies follow the general law, and sink or swim, according to the proportion of their gravity to the gravity of the water of the Lake; but its specific gravity is such, that a man may lie upon its surface motionless, without danger of sinking. This effect was experienced by Pococke, and by a Scottish traveller, Mr Gordon of Clunie, who also bathed in it. This gentleman brought home a phial of its water, and Dr Marcet found its specific gravity to be 1.211; a degree of density, says he, “not to be met with in any other natural water.” Dr Marcet was employed to analyse Mr Gordon’s specimen, which that gentleman had presented to Sir Joseph Banks in 1807; and the whole process, with its results, is detailed in the Philosophical Transactions for that year. It was found that 100 grains of the water contains the following substances, in the under-mentioned proportions:

					Grains.
Muriat of lime	.	.	.	.	3,920
Muriat of magnesia		.	.	.	10,246
Muriat of soda	.	.	.	.	10,360
Sulphat of lime		.	.	.	0,054
					24,580

The water of the Dead Sea had teen previously analysed by Messrs Macquer, Lavoisier, and Sage, of whose experiments an account was published in the Mémoires de l’Academie des Sciences for the year 1778. Their analysis afforded results greatly different from those obtained by Dr Marcet, which that gentleman ascribes to some inaccuracy in their mode of operating. We find, however, that the processes employed by Dr Marcet have been called in question, and the accuracy of his proportions denied by a very skilful Chemist, who subsequently instituted an analysis of the Dead Sea water. We allude to Klaproth, who procured a specimen brought from the East by the Abbé Mariti, and whose analysis offered the following proportions:

Muriat of magnesia								.	.	.	.	.	.	24,200
Muriat of lime						.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	10,600
Muriat of soda						.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	7,800
														42,600
Water	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	57,400
														100.000

Klaproth also found the specific gravity to be 1,245 instead of 1,211; agreeing in this respect more nearly with Macquer and Lavoisier, who stated it at 1,240. The specific gravity of Dr Marcet’s specimen may, however, have been less, from its having been taken from the Lake, not far from the influx of the Jordan, on which account it might be somewhat diluted.

Dr Clarke mentions, that the inhabitants of the country still regard the Dead Sea with feelings of terror This may be owing to the tradition that its waters cover the engulphed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, or to the ideas entertained of the peculiar insalubrity of its exhalations. It is much to be regretted, that this Traveller was prevented by the Arabs, who infested the neighbourhood, from exploring the Lake, which he only saw at some distance; as with his attainments, he could not have failed to gather some interesting information regarding its natural history. Though M. de Chateaubriand, a few years after, succeeded in reaching its banks, he could only, owing to the same cause, remain a few hours; and besides, however capable of interesting his readers, he was not so well qualified for accurate or scientific observation. While seme of his facts run counter to the ancient fables, others seem calculated to add to the list; as, when he discovers a resemblance between the noise of its waves, and the stiffled clamours of the people whom they engulphed! The following passage, however, is of the antifabulous kind, and contains some information which cannot but be acceptable to our readers. “There is scarcely any one who has not heard of the famous tree of Sodom; a tree, said to produce an apple pleasing to the eye, but bitter to the taste, and full of ashes. Tacitus, in the fifth book of his History, and Josephus, in his Jewish war, are, I believe, the two first authors that made mention of the singular fruits of the Dead Sea. Foulcher de Chartres, who travelled in Palestine about the year 1100, saw the deceitful apple, and compared it to the pleasures of the world. Since that period, some writers, as Ceverius de Vera, Baumgarten, de la Vallée, Troilo, and certain Missionaries, confirm Foulcher’s statement; others, as Reland, Father Neret, and Maundrell, are inclined to believe that this fruit is but a poetic image of our false joys; while others again, as Pococke and Shaw, absolutely question its existence.

“Amman seemed to remove the difficulty. He gave a description of the tree, which, according to him, resembles the hawthorn, “The fruit,” says he, “is a small apple, of a beautiful colour.”

“Hasselquist, the Botanist, followed, and he tells a totally different story. The apple of Sodom, as we are informed by him, is not the fruit either of a tree or of a shrub, but the production of the Solanum melongena of Linnæus. “It is found in great abundance,” says he, “round Jericho, in the valleys near the Jordan, and in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. It is true that these apples are sometimes full of dust; but this appears only when the fruit is attacked by an insect (tenthredo), which converts the whole of the inside into dust, leaving nothing but the rind entire, without causing it to lose any of its colour.”

“Who would not imagine, after this, that the question had been set completely at rest, by the authority of Hasselquist, and the still greater authority of Linnæus, in his Flora Palæstina? No such thing. M. Seetzen, also a man of science, and the most modern of all Travellers, since he is still in Arabia, does not agree with Hasselquist in regard to the Solanum Sodomeum. “I saw,” says he, “during my stay at Karrak, in the house of the Greek clergyman of that town, a species of cotton resembling silk. This cotton, as he told me, grows in the plain of El Gor, near the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, on a tree like a fig-tree, called Abescha-ez; it is found in a fruit resembling the pomegranate. It struck me, that this fruit, which has no pulp or flesh in the inside, and is unknown in the rest of Palestine, might be the celebrated apple of Sodom.”

“Here I am thrown into an awkward dilemma; for I too have the vanity to imagine that I have discovered the long-sought fruit. The shrub which bears it grows two or three leagues from the mouth of the Jordan: it is thorny, and has small taper leaves. It bears a considerable resemblance to the shrub described by Amman; and its fruit is exactly like the little Egyptian lemon, both in size and colour. Before it is ripe, it is filled with a corrosive and saline juice; when dried it yields a blackish seed, which may be compared to ashes, and which in taste resembles bitter pepper.” See Chateaubriand’s Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary.—Dr Clarke’s Travels in Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land.—Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1807.—Klaproth, Beiträge zur Chemischen Kenntniss der Mineral Körper. B. 5. p. 185. Berlin, 1810.