Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1881-07-21
SODOM AND G0MORRAH.

The Nile is sacred river, and the Tibel
is famous, but the most sacred and most ia
nous river in the world is the Jordan. From
the beginning to its end, it has that mystical
character which BELTS such lofty pretensions
its life is the most vivid and complete, and
its death the most sudden that can be i'm.
agined. 1t is torrential, and it leaves the
fanks of Herman and the many fountains Of
it's tributaries with an eager precipitation as
if it bore mission. From its greatest height,
some hundred feet above the sea level, it
leaps downward until it disappears in the
! Dead Sea, some thirteen hundred feet be.
low it. 1t hides itself among oleander, tama-
risk and willow and many an unfamiliar
oriental tree, as if wishing to keep from pro.
fame eyes the secret of its errand. 1t does not
stop long to overflow its banks and fertilize
its valley, for it has purpose too mystical to
waste itself even upon acts of bene6cence.
1t is only willing to become living barrier
between the desert tribes and the favored na-
ton that loved it. No boat lives on its
bosom. No fishermen dwell by its margin /;
but it moves in one headlong column of sacred
waters from its cradle of snow and cloud,
high in the heaven, till it dies in fatal lake
marked by the finger of God, and forever a
subject for mans curiosity and reverence
1t would seem a thing apart and not to be
confounded with vulgar waters, which lose
their personality in the bosom of the mighty
sea, but exhaling to heaven like some holy
messenger who perished in the ful6lment Of
his duty. It's birth and its death alike sepa-
rate it from its sister rivers of earth, and only
the voiceless mounds of perished and nameless
cities, tribes stationary as if bidden to halt by
some supreme destiny of the past, or the awed
and questioning stranger from the many
Christian lands whose baptism drew its au-
thority from the first sprinkling of its waters
are seen upon its banks.
And then we wandered through many
whispering reeds, through a kind Of jungle
where sterility and the river had seemingly
fought for the mastery, and which showed
traces of both; tangle of bushes as it we're
fighting their way up, and great spaces OF
barrenness which summer would scorch to
lifelessness.
And at last the Dead Sea. Though we
know it is of volcanic origin, and fed by mines
of salt, the imagination now, as ever, is
content to see in it thing accursed. There
was fresh breeze and a reluctant lift and
heavy tumble Of its tiny breakers made
them unlike other waves, but rather like
those of Dante's Internal sea. There was
breath heavy with doom in the air, and we
were fortunate it was not more sitting. Was
it the breath of those lost or tortured there !?
And beneath that saline sheet did we not see,
as in the picture of Delacroix, the agonizing
and twisting figures of the condemned?
We did not battle in the Dead Sea. 9th
ers have done so, and report of it's buoy.
ancy the same tales that are told of our own
Salt Lake. There is a whimsical coincidence
in the geographical relation Of the Dead Sea
and the home Of the earlier prophets, and
Brig ham Young's personal continuation OF
the old dispensation, with private Dead Sea
of his own in his immediate neighborhood
The poorest swimmer keeps his head above
water and persons have said to me that their
legs seem to fly from under them. All speak
of its waters as refreshing after the great
heat of the tropical valley. Birds are said
never to fly over it, which is the merest su.
perstition, for they are often seen to do So
This lake certainly has brand on it, as of di.
vine vengeance. The waters are heavy with
sin, the shores around blasted, and the very
site of destroyed cities upon its banks un-
know !. And here still are to be seen apples
of Sodom, smooth and pretty to the eye and
touch. Of a pale yellow, like small orange,
but within, as Josephus says, still retaining
the ashes of Sodom in living perpetuity of
the divine puishment They are like little
oranges to the eye and touch, but when press
ed are like oak-apples, and explode like these,
a puff of air, leaving the shell hollow, with
only slender pouch holding fine 6laments
like silk, which the Arabs use as matches for
their guns.