The colour of the Jordan river, as Arculf informed us, seems white
like milk on the top; and, as it enters the salt sea, for a considerable
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stretch along the bed one can easily distinguish this particular colour
from that of the Dead Sea.
During great storms, by reason of the beating of waves against the
land, the Dead Sea strews salt abundantly throughout the surrounding
area, and this, when it is sufficiently dried by the heat of the sun, is of
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very great benefit not alone to the local people everywhere but even to
peoples situated far away. There is another way of getting salt in a
mountain in Sicily. The stones of this mountain, when torn away from
the earth, are found on tasting to be genuinely the purest natural salt,
which is properly called salt of the earth. Thus it is customary to distinguish
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the names sea salt and salt of the earth. Whence the Lord in the
gospel is believed to have said to the apostles by means of a similitude:
‘You are the salt of the earth.’ Accordingly the holy Arculf told us about
this salt of the earth, which is found in a mountain of Sicily. While
tarrying for some days in Sicily, by sight and taste and touch he proved
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it to be genuinely the purest salt. He told us also about the salt of the
Dead Sea, which likewise, he asserted, was proved by him by means of
the three senses mentioned. He used actually to visit the shore of the
lake in question. Its length as far as Zoari in Arabia measures five
hundred and eighty stades, and its breadth, as far as the environs of
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Sodom, one hundred and fifty stades.