SATURDAY, APRIL 29: Awakened at daylight by one of the Arabs calling the rest to prayer. The summons but slightly heeded. Despatched Lieut. Dale, Dr. Anderson, and Mr. Bedlow, with the interpreter, a Turkish soldier, and some Arab guides, to Sebbeh (Masada); they took the camel with them to carry water. Soon after breakfast, sent the Fanny Skinner to sound in a north and south line, between the peninsula and the western shore. A clear, pleasant morning; wind fresh from the N.W. Experienced some difficulty in getting the boat through the surf. Remained in camp to write a report of proceedings to the Hon. Secretary of the Navy, and to answer the kind letters of H.B.M. Consul at Jerusalem, and Mr. Jasper Chasseaud, U.S. Consul at Beïrût. Every thing quiet; and, towards noon, as the wind subsided, the sea assumed its sombre and peculiar hue. At noon, fired out at sea, in honour of the illustrious dead, twenty-one minute-guns from the heavy blunderbuss mounted on the bow of the Fanny Mason. The reports reverberated loudly and strangely amid the cavernous recesses of those lofty and barren mountains. This sea is wondrous, in every sense of the word; so sudden are its changes, and so different the aspects it presents, as to make it seem as if we were in a world of enchantment. We were alternately upon the brink and the surface of a huge, and sometimes seething cauldron. Picked up a piece of scoriated lava.
At 1 P.M., Mr. Aulick returned. He reported a gradual decrease of soundings to thirteen fathoms, nearly up the slope to the shallow basin of the southern sea. Everything favours the supposition that the guilty cities stood on the southern plain, between Usdum and the mountains of Moab. The northern part must have been always water, or the plain have sunk at the time of the catastrophe. Protected by our presence from the fear of robbers, some of the Ta’amirah came in to harvest their few scanty patches of barley. They cut the grain, with their swords for reaping-hooks, and threw it upon the threshing floor, — a circular piece of hard, trampled ground, around which were driven three donkeys, abreast. It was a slow and wasteful process. The little unmuzzled brutes were, in their rounds, permitted to nip the upturned ears. We had often noticed the humanity of this people towards the brute creation. In a moment of excitement, Sherîf wounded a stork, but seemed sincerely sorry for it afterwards. The Arab who brought the wild boar pigs to sell, cut their throats rather than turn them adrift, when they would have perished for want of food, which they were too young to procure. These Arabs always express great horror at anything like wanton cruelty towards animals. And yet ’Akil looked upon the woman whose husband he had slain, without the drooping of an eyelid, or the visible relaxation of a muscle. It is for philosophers to account for this trait of humanity towards animals, in a race proverbially reckless of the lives of their fellow-creatures. The small quantity of grain these people could spare, we purchased for distribution at home. In the afternoon, mounted on Sherîf ’s spirited mare, I went up to the fountain of Ain Jidy. It is a clear, beautiful stream, issuing from the rock, skirted by the cane and shadowed by the nubk, four hundred feet up the mountain. The view from it was magnificent, particularly towards Usdum and the southern basin of the sea.
