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.(427) (427) For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward Robinson, D. D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch's Exploring Expedition; De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte; Stanley's Palestine and Syria; Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and other travellers hereafter quoted. For good photogravures, showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration. For geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-834; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and especially as supplemented in Gage's translation with additions; Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a small map is given presenting the difference in depth between the two ends of the lake, of which so much was made theologically before Lartet. For still better