OCR Text |
Show OF AMERICA. 101 at the experience of an English traveller, who, for experi ment, opened his eyes beneath the water, and suffered very considerable inconvenience from the smarting and flow of tears that followed. I will not further describe my bath. Let the reader read Dr. Newman's book, " From Dan to Beersheba " and he will be much better pleased with his account of a bath in the Dead Sea than with anything I might write, though my experience was very similar. Before going into the lake, I took the precaution to have some fresh water brought from a neighboring spring, with which to wash the salty solution from my body, and soon saw the utility of the precaution. Neglecting to include my hair in the washing, I found it filled with a fine white powder of salt. The bath altogether was one of the most pleasant I ever had. The temperature of the water was delightful, and after remaining immersed for half an hour, I left it feel ing invigorated and refreshed rather than debilitated. There seems to be a difference of opinion about the buoyancy of the water of this remarkable lake. Captain Burton is the only individual I have ever seen, or read of, or heard of, who did not float on its surface, when bathing in it, and his statement seems a little equivo cal. He says he found no difficulty in sinking ; neither would we find any difficulty in sinking a stick of soft wood for a moment in the Mississippi or North River if one should be dropped from a pier or a boat perpen dicularly to the water. I have no idea that the body of a man, if he jumped on the water, would rebound like a rubber ball when struck against a marble slab ; but I am very much inclined to think that if the gen tleman named has five pounds of fat in his whole corpus some part of it would float above water. But the tendency of writers is to exaggerate the other way ; they represent the water to be more buoyant than it is. Certainly it is remarkable enough without exaggerating to furnish subject- matter for an interesting letter ; then why spoil the whole by overreaching possibilities. One writer says: " With my hands clasped together under rny |