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

Sodom. That has been done score of times The search for those lost cities of the barbaric world, ehgulfed by the fire of the wrath of Jehovah and buried for centuries under the desert sands, has led many fruitless expedi- tions into the land of Noah.
 Our first task was to establish upon indisputable evidence the civilization of of the Early Bronze Age, the Abra- hamic Age, in that region of the Dead Sea where Sodom was supposed to have existed. We then had to show that the long silence of scripture concerningg any subsequent civilization there was, or was not. in accordance with the facts as shown by the material evidence. Having established these things we were in a position to inquire where the ancient metropolis, Sodom, stood.
 The Biblical account of the destruc- tion of Sodom and Gomorrah states that it rained fire and birthstone from heaven upon the. cities. It does not say where the sulphur came from nor how the fire was kindled, nor what caused it to smoke up to heaven like the smoke of a furnace;" nor yet whence came the salt which incrusted one of the ref ugees who, like some at POmpeii, loiter- ed behind and was caught. The finding of geologic evidence, in support of these apparent miracles, was also a part of our task. The difficulty of our work can be better appreciated when one remembers that Sodom and the Amorite civilization of its period ex- isted half millennium before the time of Moses or Tutankhamen.
 period existed half a millennium be- fore the time of Moses or Tutankha- men.
 We were prepared for the most ex- haustive investigations. Our party in. cluded Dr. Albright, director of the American School of Oriental Research at Jerusalem; Prof. Alfred Day, geolo- gist of Beyrout college; Pere Eloise Mallon, an expert on flint and old stone lore of the Holy Land; Na'im Makhhouli, of the Antiquities Depart ment of Palestine, and Mir. Dinsmore, a famous Palestine botanist. %. .
 Find Hill City on Route
 We went by motor to Kerak, around through eastern Moab by way of Els Salt and Amman. As far as Amman we followed the old Roman road; from Amman to Kerak we went by trail across the desert.
 It was a wild ride, up five thousand feet from Allenby's bridge over the Jordan to the hill of Kerak, the old fortress and ancient Kir of Moab.
 At Kerak we found relics of Cru sader, Arabic or perhaps Byzantine times. But also we found ancient pottery on the side of the precipe east of town. On the side of the precipice But nobody ever built a city there And then in a moment we knew. The Crusader castle was just above. The Crusaders had swept the rubbish of the old Kir over the edge of the precipice.
 There on the side of the precipice we found the remains of Kir. Then our query for the spring was instantly answered, for right before our eyes a well-worn path along the mountain side led to an excellent spring. Along that pathway was a cave and in the cave we found a tunnel leading straight toward the site of the old Kir on the hill-a secret way to get water when the city was beleaguered. The High Place, which we supposed had been swept with other rubbish into the val ley, was found away on the highest point of the isolated mountain on which the city stood.
 Pottery Establishes Dates.
 As these findings of ancient pottery at Kerak led us to the discovery of the old Kir, so have the potEhreds es-