The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-22

| the plain along the old Roman road, | of which branch runs down the Lisan, | the tongue of land that juts out from | the east and nearly cuts the sea in two. Arabs still living at Kerak remember when camel caravans used to ford the sea at that point. When the sea had filled in enough at the upper end, it ran over at this point and flooded the southern plain.
 All, the time we were camped at Ghor. Els Safi on this plain there had beenLglafing in the sunlight day by day--that great white mountain on the west shore; not so high as those back of it, but conspicuous because gleam- ing like, q vertible mountain ~ salt Yes, salt That is exactly what gleams and flashes there. We. hired motor boat at Ei Merza, the port of Kerak on the sea, to cruise about that salt mountain. It is known as Jebel Usdum and consists of a stratum of rock salt 150 feet thick at the base. Between the layers, and running down over them from the. top, is a mari mixed with pure sulphur sLumps of it may be picked up far and wide over the plain.
 This salt and sulphur encrusts every thing in the neighborhood. A certain pinnacle of the mountain incrusted with | it has been pointed out by the Arabs as Lots wife. That Identification is only legend, but the incrustation shows exactly what happened to the poor woman, reluctant to leave her home. Some people imagine the whole story to be a myth. It is the simplest mar | rative of historical fact.
 The geologists, Wright and Black enkorn, while working here twenty years ago, found unmistakable evidence of just such a catastrophe as the Bible | records. This is a burned out region of oil and asphalt. The oil has collect ed again; in fact, they are now drill ing for oil near Hebron. At some point in historical time, the date of which geology cannot fix, some thing kindled the gases which ac- company oil. There was an upheavai and then subsistence and the great stratum of rock salt and sulphur was ruptured. The salt and sulphur were carried, red. hot, up into the heavens, from which fire and birthstone were rained upon Sodom and the whole plan and "all that grew out of the ground.
 Bible And Science Agree
 The whole region was blasted. The account in the Bible draws aside the curtain to let us see what God was do l ing. The geologists show us what took place fin rthe elements of nature. The two accounts exactly agree.
 Now. where was that catastrophe Where was Sodom? Manifestly the catastrophe was where the ruins of il now are. Ruins "stay put" The rivers converge toward a point in the shallow water, in front of this salt mountain-the place which was over flowed by the filling in of the upper end of the sea since Abraham's day. There the waters have mercifully come and hid from view the shame of the doomed cities.
 Some one will remind me at this point that the actual evidence of that old civilization on the plain has not been shown. That very day of our cruise to Jebel Usdum,. Pere Mallon came upon some graves which the Arabs had open ed in search of treasure. They were on the high ground at the eastern edge of the cultivated land. There, scat tered around the graves, were many precious pieces of the beautiful light pot tery of the Early Bronze Age. An ex. animation the following day showed hun dreds of these graves and a great duan- tity of pottery. Here was conclusive evidence that the old civilization of that age-of :which we could. find no trace