and legends,
and he sums up the whole as follows: "A great mass of legends and
exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old belief
that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually
removed in recent years."

So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the great
church of St. Peter at Zurich, gave to the world a book of travels,
reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly acknowledged that the
needles of salt at the southern end of the Dead Sea "in primitive times
gave rise to the tradition that Lot's wife was transformed into a statue
of salt." Thus was the mythical character of this story at last openly
confessed by Leading churchmen on both continents.

Plain statements like these from such sources left the high theological
position more difficult than ever, and now a new compromise was
attempted. As the Siberian mother tried to save her best-beloved child
from the pursuing wolves by throwing over to them her less favoured
children, so an effort was now made in a leading commentary to save the
legends of the valley of Siddim and the miraculous destruction of the
cities by throwing overboard the legend of Lot's wife.(444)

(444) For Mislin, see his Les Saints Lieux, Paris, vol. iii, pp.
290-293, especially note at foot of page 292. For Schaff, see his
Through Bible Lands, especially chapter xxix; see also Rev. H. S.
Osborn, M. A., The Holy Land, pp. 267 et seq.; also Stanley's Sinai and
Palestine, London, 1887, especially pp. 290-293. For Furrer, see his
En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i, p.246. For the attempt to save
one legend by throwing overboard the other, see Keil and Delitzsch,
Biblischer Commentar uber das Alte Testament, vol. i, pp. 155, 156. For
Van de Velde, see his Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.

An amusing result has followed this development of opinion. As we have
already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and Protestant, now
visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one of them follows the New Testament
injunction to "remember Lot's wife." Nearly every one of them seems to
think it best to forget her. Of the great mass of pious legends they are
shy enough, but that of Lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to
have heard of, and if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole
subject with a haze of pious rhetoric.(445)

(445) The only notice of the Lot's wife legend in the editions of
Robinson at my command is a very cur