Poppies grow among the scanty green crops growing on soil tilled only by the wooden ploughs of the fellaheen. But we soon reach ochre rocks and deep gullies. We see five women walking steadily in single file, carrying water jugs on their heads. Somewhere people are living in this arid desert!

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The car goes on. Far away from the road, among the rugged rocks, wet in winter, shining in summer, lies a penitentiary retreat for Greek monks. At the cross-roads of the Jericho and Dead Sea streets a modern police-station rises behind old ruined walls. A few yards from it is a house―a shop for the sale of oranges, bananas and petrol, in the middle of the desert! The Arabian proprietor speaks German with a Berlin accent; he has lived there a long time, and his wife is a Berlin woman. They have three sons, who fill the car's petrol tank. A Modern Scene.

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Soon the landscape changes. A large signboard bears the words "Sea Level." Another, a little further on says: "Beneath Sea Level." We go on, and enter a truly oriental scene of white hillocks, like desolate dunes. In the quivering light we suddenly see flat modern houses, through which the wind blows here at 400 metres below sea level, in the summer. The air is hot. Some scrubby undergrowth, more sand, and barbed wire the entrance to a factory! A hefty nigger is on guard; he lets no-one enter. This is Palestine Potash, Ltd., a company founded in 1930 to exploit the mineral contents of the Dead Sea, with a capital of £400,000. Every year 10,000 tons are extracted; with 80 per cent of potash, in addition to magnesia and other minerals. It is anticipated that when the present enlargement of the plant has been completed, the total annual output will reach 100,000 tons.

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Twenty minutes further on we come to a parking place, where we find dozens of private cars and a dozen omnibuses. Close to this is a small, lightly painted building, the Beach Restaurant. And then, a few steps, and we are facing the Dead Sea. A delightful picture, like an Italian lake, with water as blue as the skies. Leading down to it, a beach of white sand. Beyond the sea, the blue shimmering mountains of Trans-Jordania. People in small boats are on the sea, and the scenes on the beach are just such as one sees in any European seaside resort. A bathing establishment, with cabins for dressing, a ticket office, and bathing attire on hire.

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Only one difference; the water, like a thick soup, in which one is apt to swim head down, legs in the air, but without sinking. Urgent warning notices, not to swallow any water. And after a dip, it is very necessary to have a thorough clean-up under a shower.

International Visitors.

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The visitors are international―but not international society people. There are French soldiers from Syria, English soldiers and officials, and Jews from all parts of the world. Everyone is enjoying the seashore, simply, and with no fashionable seaside clothes.

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The Beach Restaurant has a dancing floor, rimmed with small tables, on which stand lamps with pretty coloured shades. Tea and coffee, in charming blue-green china, are handed round by a black waiter dressed in white with a red scarf and fez. Five o'clock, thé dansant by the Dead Sea! Amazing scenes of modern merry-making on a Dead Sea Lido! Perhaps, the most astonishing sight of this astonishing land. Dancing and drinking tea over the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorra. It is the more surprising, because to most people the name "Dead Sea" conjures up visions of terrifying desolation and a grey waste, and here they find a charming blue sea framed by bluish mountains which, at sunset, gradually fade from vision under a greenish, violet tinted sky. Here the motto is "Nil Admirari."

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Terrifying desolation and grey waste disappear where sulphur and other mineral products are a lure to mankind, leading them to install machinery, workshops and laboratories, and to develop all that business activity which is making a-new Europe out of the "unchanging East."

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