In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to the
modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller in Palestine
the case was very different. The rocky, barren desolation of the Dead
Sea region impressed him deeply; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this
impression and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred
literature, rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the
earlier thought of mankind. The long circumstantial account given in
Genesis, its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah,
by Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in
the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, in the
Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one utterance of the Master
himself--all show how deeply these geographical features impressed the
Jewish mind.

At a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew
up to explain features then so incomprehensible.

As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of
hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the
consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants beneath
a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar offence by the
people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the consequent sinking
of that valley with its inhabitants beneath the waters of the Dead Sea.
Very similar to the accounts of the saving of Philemon and Baucis are
those of the saving of Lot and his family.

But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in ancient
times; they continued to grow through the medieval and modern period
until they have quietly withered away in the light of modern scientific
investigation, leaving to us the religious and moral truths they
inclose.

It would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths: their
origin in times prehistoric, their development in Greece and Rome, their
culmination during the ages of faith, and their disappearance in the age
of science. It would be especially instructive to note the conscientious
efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises between
science and theology regarding them; but I shall mention this main group
only incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above
named--the most remarkable of all--the myth which grew about the salt
pillars of Usdum.

I select this mainly because it involves only elementary principles,
requires no