Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852», sayfa 4

THE VOYAGE TO EN-GEDI

After remaining a day or two at Feshkah, and making various excursions across the sea and along the shores, from that station, for the purpose of measuring distances and taking soundings, the party broke up their encampment, and prepared to proceed to the southward. They made arrangements for taking every thing with them on board the boats, except a load from one single camel, which was to be sent along the shore. Their intention was to proceed to En-gedi, and to encamp there at the foot of the cliffs, on the little plain which Robinson had visited about ten years before. This encampment at En-gedi was to be a sort of permanent station for the party during all the time necessary for the survey of the middle and southern portions of the sea. It was a suitable spot for such a post, on account of its central position, and also on account of the abundant supply of fresh water which could be obtained there from the fountain. The company were obliged to hasten their departure from Feshkah; for the water of the fountain at the place of their first encampment was brackish and unfit for use, while the supply which they had brought from the Jordan was nearly exhausted. Their stock of provisions, too, was well-nigh spent, and Lieutenant Lynch felt a considerable degree of uneasiness in respect to the means of sufficiently replenishing it. He sent off detachments from his party to Hebron and to Jerusalem, to procure supplies, directing them to bring whatever they could procure to En-gedi. He also sent an Arab chieftain, named Akil, round to the eastern side of the sea, to Kerak, to purchase provisions there. The Arab, if successful, was to bring down his stores to the sea, at the peninsula, and at the proper time, Lieutenant Lynch was to send one of the boats across from En-gedi to receive them.

Things being thus arranged, the tents were struck, the boats pushed off from the land, while a train of Arabs attended by the loaded camel, took up their line of march along the beach. As they proceeded, the boats stopped from time to time, to note and to record every thing worthy of notice that appeared along the shore. They passed the mouth of the brook Kedron, a deep gorge, narrow at the base, and yawning wide at the summit. The sides of this frightful ravine were twelve hundred feet high. The bed of it was perfectly dry; the waters of the stream at this season of the year being wholly absorbed by the sands long before reaching the sea. They passed many caves, some opening into the face of the rock, far up the mountain sides, in positions wholly inaccessible. The shores were generally barren and desolate, consisting of dark brown mountains, which looked as if they had been scorched by fire, with a narrow beach equally dreary and desolate below. Here and there, however, little valleys opened, which sustained a scanty vegetation, and birds and other animals were occasionally seen. There seemed to be no vegetation, except at points where streams or springs of fresh water flowed down from the land.

The boats proceeded onward in this manner till night, and then rounding a point which was covered sparsely with bushes and trees, and with tufts of cane and grass, they came into a little bay which opened to a dell, fertilized by a fountain. The name of the fountain was Turabeh. Flowers were growing here, and certain fruits, the sight of which gladdened the eyes of our voyagers, though in any other situation they would have attracted little attention. The stream which sustained this vegetation was extremely small. The water trickled down from the spring so scantily that the Arabs were forced to dig holes in the sand, and wait for them to fill, in order to procure enough for drink. Still its influence was sufficient to clothe its narrow dell with something like verdure and fruitfulness. The little oasis had its inhabitants, too, as well as its plants and flowers. One of the party saw a duck at a little distance from the shore, and fired at her; though it might have been thought that no one could have had the heart to disturb even a duck in the possession of so solitary and humble a domain. In fact, it seems the sportsman must have had some misgivings, and was accordingly not very careful in his aim, for the bird was not harmed by the shot. She flew out to sea a little way, alarmed by the report, and then alighting on the glassy surface of the water, began to swim back again toward the shore, as if thinking it not possible that the strange intruders into her lonely home, whoever and whatever they might be, could really intend to do her any harm.

Soon after the party in the boats had landed, the camel with his attendants arrived, and they all encamped on this spot for the night. The scene which presented itself when the arrangements had been made for the night was, as usual in such cases, very solemn and impressive. The tents stood among the trees. The Arab watch-fires were burning. The boats were drawn up upon the shore. The dark and sombre mountains rose like a wall behind the encampment; while the smooth and placid sea was spread out before it, reflecting with a sort of metallic lustre the silver radiance of the moon. The stillness, too, which reigned around seemed strange and fearful, it was so absolute and profound.

In the morning, the party, after breakfasting under the trees on the shore, resumed their voyage. After proceeding a few miles along the coast, they saw an Arab on the beach. The Arab hailed the party, and they attempted to communicate with him, but could not understand what he said. At one place they stopped to examine a mass of ruins which they saw standing a short distance up the mountain side. The ruins proved to be the remains of a wall, built to defend the entrances to several caves which opened in the face of the precipice directly behind them. The caves were perfectly dry, and one of them was large enough to contain twenty or thirty men. There were openings cut from them through the rock to the air above, intended apparently to serve the purpose of chimneys. These caves were in the wilderness of En-gedi.

In fact, the boats were now drawing near to their place of destination. At noon they arrived at the spot, and the party landing, unloaded the boats and hauled them up upon the shore. They selected a spot for their encampment on the little plain at the foot of the cliffs, not far from the place where the stream descends to it from the mountain above. They found that the gardens and other marks of vegetation which Robinson had observed at the time of his visit, had disappeared; in other respects, every thing corresponded with his description. The water was gushing from the fountain as copiously as ever, and was disappearing as rapidly in the sands of its thirsty bed, after running its short and foaming course along its little dell. After a brief survey of the scene, the ground was marked out, the tents were pitched, and the stores deposited within them; the boats were hauled up and examined for repairs, and all the arrangements made for a permanent encampment; for this was to be the head-quarters of the expedition during all the remaining time that they were to spend upon the sea. They named it "Camp Washington."

EXPLORINGS

The encampment thus established at En-gedi continued to be occupied as the head-quarters of our party for two or three weeks, during which time many expeditions were fitted out from it, for exploring the whole southern portion of the sea, and the country around. The engineer of the party measured a base line on the beach, and from the two stations at the extremities of it took the bearings of all the important points on the shores of the sea. He made the necessary astronomical observations also for determining the exact latitude and longitude of the camp. Parties were sent out, too, sometimes along the shores and up the mountains to collect plants and specimens, and at other times across to the eastern shore to measure the breadth of the sea, and to make soundings for determining the depth of it in every part. They preserved specimens and memorials of every thing. Even the mud and sand, and the cubical crystals of salt which their sounding apparatus brought up from the bottom of the sea, were put up in airtight vessels to be brought home for the inspection of naturalists and philosophers in America. Thus the whole party were constantly employed in the various labors incident to such an undertaking, meeting from time to time with strange and romantic adventures, and suffering on many occasions most excessively from exposure and fatigue.

One of the most remarkable of the expeditions which they made from their camp at En-gedi, was a cruise of four days in the southern portion of the sea, in the course of which they circumnavigated the whole southern shore. In following down the western coast in first commencing their voyage, they found the scenery much the same as it had been in the northern part of the sea, the coast being formed of bald and barren mountains, desolate and gloomy, with a low, flat beach below, and sometimes a broad peninsula, or delta, formed, at the mouths of the ravines, by the detritus brought down from above. Farther south, however, the water became very shoal, so much so, that at last they could not approach the shore near enough to land, without wading for a great distance through water and mire. In fact, the line of demarkation between the land and the sea was often scarcely perceptible, the land consisting of low flats and slimy mud, coated with incrustations of salt, and sometimes with masses of drift-wood lying upon it, while the water was covered with a frothy scum, formed of salt and bitumen. Sometimes for miles the water was only one or two feet deep, and the men in such cases, leaving the boats, waded often to a great distance from them. Every night, of course, they stopped and encamped on the land.

THE SIROCCO

The party suffered on some occasions most intensely from heat and thirst. Their supply of water was not abundant, and one of the principal sources of solicitude which the officers of the expedition felt throughout the cruise, was to find fountains where they could replenish their stores. One night they were reduced to the greatest extreme of misery from the influence of an intolerably hot and suffocating wind, which blew upon them from off the desert to the southward. It was the Sirocco. It gave them warning of its approach on the evening before by a thin purple haze which spread over the mountains a certain unnatural and lurid hue, that awakened a mysterious emotion of awe and terror. Something dreadful seemed to be portended by it. It might be a thunder-tempest; it might be an earthquake, or it might be some strange and nameless convulsion of nature incident to the dreadful region to which they had penetrated, but elsewhere unknown. The whole party were impressed with a sentiment of solemnity and awe, and deeming it best for them to get to the land as soon as possible, they took in sail, turned their boats' heads to the westward, and rowed toward the shore.

In a short time they were struck suddenly by a hot and suffocating hurricane, which blew directly against them, and, for a time, not only stopped their progress, but threatened to drive them out again to sea. The thermometer rose immediately to 105°. The oarsmen were obliged to shut their eyes to protect them from the fiery blast, and to pull, thus blinded, with all their strength to stem the waves. The men who steered the boats were unable, of course, thus to protect themselves, and their eyelids became dreadfully inflamed by the hot wind before they reached the land.

At length, to their great joy, they succeeded in getting to the shore. They landed at a most desolate and gloomy spot at the mouth of a dismal ravine; and the men, drawing the boats up on the beach, immediately began to seek, in various ways, some means of escape from the dreadful influences of the blast. Several went up the ravine in search of some place of retreat, or shelter. Others finding the glare of the sun upon the rocks insupportable, while they remained on the shore, returned to the boats and crouched down under the awnings. One of the officers put spectacles upon his eyes to protect them from the lurid and burning light, but the metal of the bows became so hot, that he was obliged to remove them. Every thing metallic, in fact, such as the arms, and even the buttons on the clothes of the men, were almost burning to the touch, and the wind, instead of bringing the usual refreshing influences of a breeze, was now the vehicle of heat, and blew hot and suffocating along the beach, as if coming from the mouth of an oven.

Intolerable as the influence was of this ill-fated blast, it increased in power, until it blew a gale. The distant mountains, seen across the surface of the sea, were curtained by mists of a purple and deadly hue. The sky above was covered with bronze-colored clouds, through which the declining sun shone, red and rayless, diffusing over the whole face of nature, instead of light, a sort of lurid and awful gloom.

The sun went down, and the shades of the evening came on, but the heat increased. The thermometer rose to 106°. The wind was like the blast of a furnace. The men, without pitching their tents or making any other preparations for the night, threw themselves down upon the ground, panting and exhausted, and oppressed with an intolerable thirst. They went continually to the "water breakers," in which their supplies of water were kept, and drank incessantly, but their thirst could not be assuaged.

Things continued in this state till midnight. The wind then went down, and very soon afterward a gentle breeze sprung up from the northward. The thermometer fell to 82°, and the Sirocco was over.

THE PILLAR OF SALT

Mr. Lynch's party visited the salt mountain of Usdum, of which we have already spoken, and examined it throughout its whole extent, in a very careful and thorough manner. They found at one place, at the head of a deep and narrow chasm, a remarkable conformation of the salt rock, consisting of a tall cylindrical mass, standing out detached, as it were, from the mountain behind it, and appearing like an artificial column. It was in fact literally a pillar of salt. It was forty or fifty feet high, and was capped above with a layer of limestone, a portion perhaps of the once continuous calcareous stratum, which at some remote geological period had been deposited over the whole bed of salt. The appearance of the pillar was as if it were itself a portion of the salt mountain that had been left by the gradual disintegration and wearing away of the adjoining mass, having assumed and preserved its tall and columnar form, through the protecting influence of the cap of insoluble rock on its summit. The mass, though as seen in front it appeared to stand isolated and alone like a pillar, was connected with the precipice behind it by a sort of buttress, by means of which some of the party climbed up to the top of the gigantic geological ruin, and standing upon the pinnacle, looked down upon their companions below, and upon the wide scene of desolation and death which was spread out before them.

EXCURSION TO KERAK

As we have already mentioned, an Arab chieftain who accompanied the expedition, had been sent round to the eastern side of the sea to the town of Kerak, which was situated, as will be recollected, at the head of the valley beyond Zoar, to negotiate with the natives and to procure provisions, and a day had been appointed for him to come down to the shore, at a certain point on the peninsula, where a boat was to be sent to meet him. When the time arrived for fulfilling this appointment, Lieutenant Lynch organized a party for the excursion, and embarked for the eastern shore. On approaching the land at the appointed place of rendezvous, they saw an Arab lurking in the bushes, apparently watching for them, and soon afterward several more appeared. At first the voyagers doubted whether these were the friends whom they had come to meet or whether they were enemies lying in wait to entrap them. On approaching nearer to the beach, however, they soon recognized Akil. He seemed greatly rejoiced to see them. He informed them that he had been kindly received at Kerak, and he brought down an invitation to Lieutenant Lynch, from the chieftain that ruled there, to come up to the valley and make him a visit. After some hesitation, Lieutenant Lynch concluded to accept this invitation. He encamped, however, first on the shore for a day or two, to make the necessary explorations and surveys in the neighborhood. During this time he went out with two Arabs across the plain, to examine the supposed site of ancient Zoar. He found ruins of an ancient village there, and fragments of pottery, and other similar vestiges on the ground. At length, on the morning of the third day, leaving his boat in the care of a guard, he put himself and his party of attendants under Akil's guidance, and set out to ascend the valley. The party were fourteen in number. The sailors were mounted on mules. The officers rode on horseback. The cavalcade was escorted by a troop of twenty armed Arabs – twelve mounted and the rest on foot.

They found the valley which they had to ascend in going up to Kerak, a gloomy gorge, of the wildest and grandest character. The path was steep and very difficult, overhanging on one side a deep and yawning chasm, and being itself overhung on the other with beetling crags, blackened as if by fire, and presenting an aspect of unutterable and frightful desolation. To complete the sublimity of the scene, a terrific tempest of thunder, lightning, and rain swept over the valley while our party were ascending it, and soon filled the bottom of the gorge with a roaring and foaming torrent, which came down from the mountains and swept on toward the sea with a thundering sound. At length the party reached the brow of the table land, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, and came out under the walls of the town.

The town proved to be a dreary and comfortless collection of rude stone houses, without windows or chimneys, and blackened within with smoke. The inhabitants were squalid and miserable. Three-fourths of the people were nominally Christian. The visit of the Americans of course excited great interest. We have not time to detail the various adventures which the party met with in their intercourse with the inhabitants, or to describe the singular characters which they encountered and the extraordinary scenes through which they passed. They remained one night at Kerak, and then after experiencing considerable difficulty in escaping the importunities with which they were besieged by the chieftains for presents, they succeeded in getting away and in returning safely to their boat on the shore.

THE DEPRESSION OF THE SEA

Our party, after having spent about three weeks in making these and similar excursions from their various encampments, during which time they had thoroughly explored the shores on every side, and sounded the depths of the water in every part, made all the necessary measurements and observations both mathematical and meteorological, collected specimens for fully illustrating the geology and natural history of the region, and carefully noted all the physical phenomena which they had observed, found that their work was done. At least all was done which could be accomplished at the sea itself. One thing only remained to be determined, and that was the measure of the depression of the sea. This could be positively and precisely ascertained only by the process of "leveling a line," as it is termed, across from the sea to the shores of the Mediterranean. This work they now prepared to undertake, making arrangements at the same time for taking their final leave of the dismal lake which they had been so long exploring.

It had been long supposed that the Dead Sea lay below the general level of the waters of the earth's surface, and various modes had been adopted for ascertaining the amount of the depression. The first attempt was made by two English philosophers in 1837. The method by which they attempted to measure the depression was by means of the boiling point of water. Water requires a greater or a less amount of heat to boil it according to the degree of pressure which it sustains upon its surface from the atmosphere – boiling with less heat on the tops of mountains where the air is rare, and requiring greater in the bottoms of mines, where the density and weight of the atmosphere is increased in proportion to the depth. Heights and depths, therefore, may be approximately measured by an observation of the degree of heat indicated by the thermometer in the locality in question, when water begins to boil. By this test the English philosophers found the depression of the Dead Sea to be five hundred feet.

A short time after this experiment was performed a very careful observation was made by means of a barometer, which also, measuring, as it does, the density of the air, directly, may be made use of to ascertain heights and depths. It is, in fact, often thus employed to measure the heights of mountains. The result of observations with the barometer gave a depression to the surface of the sea of about six hundred feet.

A third method is by trigonometrical calculation. This mode is much more laborious and difficult than either of the other modes which we have alluded to, but it is more to be relied upon in its results. The data for a trigonometrical calculation are to be obtained by observing, in a very accurate manner, a series of angles of elevation and depression on a line between the points, the relative levels of which are to be obtained. Lieutenant Symonds, an officer of the English service, made such a survey with great care, a few years after the preceding experiments were performed. He carried a line across from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, connecting the two extremes of it by means of a series of vertical angles which he measured accurately, with instruments of the most exact construction. The result of the computation which he made from these data, was that the sea was depressed one thousand three hundred and twelve feet below the level of the Mediterranean.

The surprise which had been felt at the results of the experiments first mentioned, was greatly increased by the announcement of this result. No one was disposed really to question the accuracy of the engineer's measurements and calculations, but it seemed still almost incredible that a valley lying so near the open sea could be sunken so low beneath its level. There was one remaining mode of determining the question, and that was by carrying an actual level across the land, by means of leveling instruments, such as are used in the construction of railroads and canals. This would be, of course, a very laborious work, but there was a general desire among all who took an interest in the subject that it should be performed and Lieutenant Lynch determined to undertake it.

Accordingly, when the time arrived for leaving the shores of the sea, he organized a leveling party, furnishing them with the necessary instruments and with proper instructions, and commissioned them to perform this service. They began by scaling the face of the mountain which rose almost perpendicularly from the shore of the sea at the place of the last encampment. They then proceeded slowly along, meeting with various adventures, and encountering many difficulties, but persevering steadily with the work, until at last, in twenty-three days from the time of leaving the Dead Sea, they arrived on the shore of the Mediterranean at Jaffa. The result confirmed in a very accurate manner the calculations of Lieutenant Symonds, for the difference of level was found to be a little over thirteen hundred feet – almost precisely the same as Lieutenant Symonds had determined it. The question is, therefore, now definitely settled. The vast accumulation of waters lies so far below the general level of the earth's surface that, if named after the analogy of its mighty neighbor, it might well have been called the Subterranean Sea.

Lieutenant Lynch had great reason to congratulate himself on this successful result of his labors; for the work which he had undertaken was one not only of toil, exposure, and suffering, but also of great danger. He was warned by the fatal results which had almost invariably attended former attempts to explore these waters, that if he ventured to trust himself upon them, it was wholly uncertain whether he would ever return. He followed in a track which had led all who had preceded him in taking it, to destruction; and the only hope of safety and success which he could entertain in renewing an experiment which had so often failed before, was in the superior sagacity and forethought which he and his party could exercise in forming their plans, and in the greater energy and courage, and the higher powers of endurance, which they could bring into play in the execution of them. The event proved that he estimated correctly the resources which he had at his command.