Mare Mortuum

, called also, from the bitumen which it throws up, the lake Asphaltites , is situate in Judæa, and is near 100 miles long and 25 broad. Its waters are ♦ saltier than those of the sea, but the vapours exhaled from them are not so pestilential as have been generally represented. It is supposed that the 13 cities, of which Sodom and Gomorrah, as mentioned in the Scriptures, were the capital, were destroyed by a volcano, and on the site a lake formed. Volcanic appearances now mark the face of the country, and earthquakes are frequent. Pliny , bk. 5 , ch. 6 .— Joseph us , Jewish War , bk. 4 , ch. 27 .— Strabo , bk. 16 , p.  764.— Justin , bk. 36 , ch. 3 . ♦ ‘salter’ replaced with ‘saltier’