The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the

Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or

about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a scorching, arid, repulsive

solitude. A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the

spirits. It makes one think of funerals and death.

The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly

bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It yields

quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks; this

stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell.

All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the

Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results--our bodies would

feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the

dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be

blistered from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were

disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party of

pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did complain

of any thing more than a slight pricking sensation in places where their

skin was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face smarted for a

couple of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly sun-burned

while I was bathing, and staid in so long that it became plastered over

with salt.

No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy ooze

677

The Innocents Abroad