Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
Here according to Gentile and Jewish records, was the earliest set of Phoenecian civilization. The Assyrian kings coveted the rich spoils of these cities and here in the “vale of Siddim,” the first battle in Palestine was fought. Lot was taken and his goods, but he and they were recovered by Abram. The peculiar nature of this region is indicated in the scripture account of the battle of the five kings, where mention is made of the stone pits of bitumen in the vale of Siddim. These became elements in the destruction of there guilty cities, when the measure of their exceeding wickedness was full. One day the patriarch from one of the hills toward Hebron, looked down upon the Eden like beauty of this plain, and the splendor of its cities teeming with the busy and tumultuous life of a gay population; but on the next morning, what an appalling sight was before him, as from the same spot, “he looked toward Sodom & Gomorrah, and toward all the Land of the plain, and behold, and to, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace!” Strange contrast! Beauty has returned to ashes, & life to death.
I lingered there an hour or two, gathered a few characteristic pebbles, bathed in the buoyant water in which it was impossible to sink, tasted its saline bitterness, filled a bottle with it to bring home, and then turned away toward the northeast, on a visit to the river Jordan, where our blessed Saviour was baptized. But I seem to see it now— that Sacred Death, the little dark island near the shore where we stopped, the sluggish waves slightly move under a strong breeze, the desolate heights of En-gedi on the west, the bold promontory jutting out onto the sea, from the gloomy mountains of Moab on the east, the conical salt hill far to the South, where Lot’s wife lingering perished.