SODOM AND GOMORRAH Sylvester Hassell It is believed that the wicked cities occupied a part of the site now covered by the Dead Sea. There are vast quantities of sulphur and bitumen and salt, and numerous evidence of other than volcanic combustion, in and around that most mysterious body of water. The surface of the Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and its water, in the northern part, is 1,300 feet deep. It is the deepest depression on the surface of the earth; and the air above and around has a hot, steaming, stagnant, sulphurous character; neither animals nor vegetables live in the water; dead driftwood fringe the shores—apt emblems of the low morals of the corrupt inhabitants of the plain, and God’s terrible judgment upon them,—spiritual and eternal death. (Hassell)