The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt
layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in
solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry
wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine
heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides--a sort of
bitter "mother liquor" This fluid has become so dense as to have a
remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an acrid
and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no evidence of
life is seen in it.
Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding shores,
there was enough to make the generation of explanatory myths on a
large scale inevitable.
The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet having
shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern end is
shallow and in places marshy.
The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in
South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main
feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them by
evaporation, it resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as a
sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and
consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher
forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the Median lake
of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch lakes
of Trinidad.
Pages:
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116