In this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than ever.
Typical of his method is his examination of the Dead Sea fruit. He
found, on reaching Palestine, that Josephus's story regarding it,
which had been accepted for nearly two thousand years, was
believed on all sides; more than this, he found that the original
myth had so grown that a multitude of respectable people at
Bethlehem and elsewhere assured him that not only apples, but
pears, pomegranates, figs, lemons, and many other fruits which grow
upon the shores of the Dead Sea, though beautiful to look upon,
were filled with ashes. These good people declared to Seetzen that
they had seen these fruits, and that, not long before, a basketful of
them which had been sent to a merchant of Jaffa had turned to ashes.
Seetzen was evidently perplexed by this mass of testimony and
naturally anxious to examine these fruits. On arriving at the sea
he began to look for them, and the guide soon showed him the
"apples." These he found to be simply an _asclepia_, which had been
described by Linnaeus, and which is found in the East Indies,
Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica, and elsewhere--the "ashes" being simply
seeds.
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