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According to Strabo, there were thirteen towns swallowed up in the Lake Asphaltites; Stephen of Byzantium reckons eight; the book of Genesis, while it names five as situated in the Vale of Siddim, relates the destruction of two only: four are mentioned in Deuteronomy, and five are noticed by the author of Ecclesiasticus.
Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
Among the Greeks and Latins it is known by the name of Asphaltites; the Arabs denominate it Bahar Loth, or Sea of Lot.
Several lines of earthquake are traced from it in a north-eastern direction; and it is conjectured that the three lakes, Merom, Tiberias, and Asphaltites, together with the river Jordan, are the remaining traces of the huge gulf once filled by the Dead Sea before the land was lifted by a geological catastrophe.
On turning their faces to Kerek, the object of their search, the road led in the direction of the Lake Asphaltites, through a country which, although well cultivated, was extremely uninteresting.
Not one summit, not the smallest peak can be distinguished; you merely perceive slight inflections here and there, "as if the hand of the painter who drew this horizontal line along the sky had trembled in some places." The mountains of Judea form the range on which the observer stands as he looks down on the Lake Asphaltites.
Lying some 1,350 feet below the Mediterranean, it enables a man to live with a quarter of a lung: you may run till your legs fail with fatigue, but you can no more get out of breath than you can sink in the saline waters of Lake Asphaltites. When a railway from Jafa to Jerusalem shall civilise the 'Holy Land, I expect great things from the sites about the Jordan embouchure.
The warm baths at Tabaria show that the same cause still exists, although much restricted in its operation, an inference which is amply confirmed by the lavas, the bitumen, and pumice which continue to be thrown ashore by the waves of Asphaltites. Dr. Clarke remarks, that in the neighborhood of Cana there are several basaltic appearances.
The path winding round the southern side of the Mount of Olives at length brought Tancred in sight of a secluded village, situate among the hills on a sunny slope, and shut out from all objects excepting the wide landscape which immediately faced it; the first glimpse of Arabia through the ravines of the Judæan hills; the rapid Jordan quitting its green and happy valley for the bitter waters of Asphaltites, and, in the extreme distance, the blue mountains of Moab.
The Vale of the Asphaltites is further remarkable for a species of limestone called the fetid, the smell of which, as its name imports, is extremely offensive.
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