PROMISED REVIVAL OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1567, 26 February 1879, Page 4

PROMISED REVIVAL OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

[Scientific American.] It is reported that French capitalists have secured a grant for a railway line from Jaffa to the interior of Palestine, which will open up the Jordan valley and the whole region north of the Suez canal. In certain contingencies this road might become of great military usefulness, but it appears further that the productive resources of the country are considerable, and what is more surprising, that tho Dead Sea itself can be turned to commercial account. Chief of these at present are the stores of natural combustibles for which that region is noted. Hitherto the main obstacle to the development of steam traffic in the Levant has been the total absence of combustible material. Not only Egypt, but the shores of Syria and the R-d Sea are completely stripped of wood, and the coal imported from tho West commands a price ranging from IOJoI. to 24f01. a ton. Now the musses of asphalt continually thrown up by the Dead Sea attest the presence of vast subterranean layers of fossil vegetable matter, and tho-e signs were not long overlooked by tho enterprising men attracted to Suez by the opening of the canal and the movement of commerce in that direction. Recently numerous soundings have been made between Jaffa and the Dead Sea, which,

so tar, have not disclosed any deposits of coal proper, but, on the other hand, have laid bare inexhaustible beds of ligniie.

Of itself this store of lignite is likely to an inestimable gain to the industries and commerce of the Levant; but wo should add that the juxtaposition of asphalt great quantities furnishes the elements of a mixture of lignite and asphaltum in the form of bricks, which is equal in heating capacity to the richest bituminous coal, while its cost on the ground is only 2,50d015. a ton. It is known that similar bricks, made up of coal dust and bituminous debris from gasworks, are much sought after by French railways, since, besides their heating power, they greatly facilitate stowage, owing to their regular shape. Of course the bitumen of lower Palestine has been known from immemorial times, and was used to impart solidity to the structures of unbaked clay in Assyria and Egypt; but; it may be said that the discovery of the subterranean combustible has lifted once for all the curse which has so long rested upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and will transform the wasted shores of the Dead Sea into a focus of industry and a magazine of wealth.