Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1859 — Battling in the Dead Sea. [ARTICLE]

Battling in the Dead Sea.

A pleasant correspondent of the Boston Post, writing from Jerusalem, thus humorously describes the Dead Sea bath: “The Dead Sea has nothing of the desolation which it has been the pleasure of travelers to describe, and it seems to smile at the secret dread with which it inspires the pilgrim. I, of course, took a bath here; and for a swimmer who has a fancy to keep his legs as well as his head out of water, I can imagine it must be quite pleasant. My French friend, who is not a little inclined to corpulency, complained that he not get down into the water, and floated about, now one side up, and now another, for all the world like an inflated bladder. On emerging from the water, it was evaporated by the sun, and the salt crystalizing on our bodies gave us the appearance of animated sticks of rock candy, or a family resemblance to Lot’s wife. With a sensation upon our skins as if we had been pickled for family use, and with a taste in our mouths compounded for glauber salts and asafetida, we concluded that one bath in the Dead ■ Sea was enough for a life time.” (XCrThere are now three hundred patients jin the Indiana Hospital for the Insane—the I largest number that has ever been within its ■ walls.