Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
Who does not admire lake scenery— often so beautiful, charming and romantic? The foreign tourist will not soon forget his visits to the emerald-bordered banks of Killarny in Ireland— the sublime frames in which those Scottish pictured gems, Lomond and Patrine, are set— and the rich beauty and romantic grandeur of the Swiss waters nestled among her glorious mountains. Around all these lakes there are verdure and fruitfulness, groves and vineyards, as well as rocky palisades. Flowers linger their margins, and her vests wave behind, while fishes sport in their depths, and shells often glitter on the shore.
But this Lake of Death is a strange and unique exception. There is nothing of life or beauty here. The gradually sloping plain on the north is barren and bleached, crackling like egg shells under one’s feet. The rocky bluffs on the west and south, and the Moab cliffs on the east are dark and desolate. Not a living thing inhabits its waters—not a flower, not a green willow or shrub, except where a fresh stream flows in, smiles on its borders. Nothing of the loveliness or the music of nature is here. Its waters heavy and intensely bitter and pungent, are rarely ruffled by the breeze. All is silence, and gloom, and death. Forty miles long and ten, broad, the Dead Sea lies in a sort of grave. Its surface is lower that that of any other body of water in the world, being thirteen hundred feet below that of the Mediterranean Sea. During the most of the year an intensely hot sun is shining upon it, causing a vast amount of evaporation, sufficient perhaps to exhaust the influx of the Jordan, and of several small streams. This often fills the air with hazy vapors, adding to the somber desolation that rests over it. Without any knowledge of its early history one would naturally feel that a blight and curse are here. An how well it still testifies to the great and solemn event that long ago changed it whole aspect!