Various - Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852

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 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.

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.