Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

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BEGINNINGS OF SCEPTICISM.
249
and naturally anxious to examine these fruits. On
arriving at the sea he began to look for them, and the guide
soon showed him the " apples." These he found to be simply
an asclepia, which had been described by Linnaeus, and
which is found in the East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica,
seeds. He looked
and elsewhere the " ashes "
being simply
next for the other fruits, and the guide soon found for him
the " lemons " : these he discovered to be a species of solanum
found in other parts of Palestine and elsewhere, and the
seeds in these were the famous " cinders." He looked next
for the pears, figs, and other accursed fruits ; but, instead of
finding them filled with ashes and cinders, he found them
like the same fruits in other lands, and he tells us that he ate
the figs with much pleasure.
So perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand
years, partly by modes of thought natural to theolo-
gians, partly by the self-interest of guides, and partly by the
love of marvel-mongering among travellers.
The other myths fared no better. As to the appearance
of the sea, he found its waters not " black and sticky," but
blue and transparent ; he found no smoke rising from the
and cloud and shore were
pleasantly reflected from the surface. As to Lot's wife, he
found no salt pillar which had been a careless woman, but
the Arabs showed him many boulders which had once been
wicked men.
His work was worthily continued by a long succession
I abyss, but tells us that sunlight
of true investigators, among them such travellers or geographers
as Burckhardt, Irby, Mangles, Fallmerayer, and
Carl von Raumer : by men like these the atmosphere of
myth and legend was steadily cleared away ;
as a rule, they
simply forgot Lot's wife altogether.
In this noble succession should be mentioned an American
theologian. Dr. Edward Robinson, professor at New
York. Beginning about 1826, he devoted himself for thirty
years to the thorough study of the geography of Palestine,
and he found a worthy coadjutor in another American
divine, Dr. Eli Smith. Neither of these men departed
openly
from the old traditions : that would have cost a
heart-breaking price the loss of all further opportunity