Canals to the Dead Sea

The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations. The hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel, is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the east by way of the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might be made accessible from the Mediterranean.

The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern extremity, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea. If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level within the basin.

I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length, however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil which would be submerged—for instance, that watered by the Fountain of Elisha and other neighboring sources—is of great fertility, and, under a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm climate, and might supply Southeastern Europe with tropical products more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the Jordan shall be reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a channel of communication which might become the medium of a very extensive trade.

Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological effects. The climate of Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of which cannot be even conjectured.