Past Perfect: Flora and Fauna of Mt. Sedom
Henry Baker Tristram (1822–1906) was an English clergyman, Biblical scholar, world traveler and ornithologist.
He studied at Durham School and Lincoln College, Oxford, was ordained a priest and eventually served as canon of Durham Cathedral in 1873. He was secretary to the governor of Bermuda from 1847 to 1849.
Tristram co-founded the British Ornithologists Union and sold his extensive collection of birds to the World Museum Liverpool. Tristram’s starling, Tristram’s warbler and Tristram’s woodpecker are a few birds named for him.
During several trips to Palestine between 1858 and 1881, Tristram observed, documented and collected species in their natural habitat, making him a pioneer of Palestine zoology. Following are excerpts from one of his many travelogues, The Land of Israel, a Journal of Travels in Palestine (1865), representing his observations and methods. This extract is from a trip near the Dead Sea noting his impressions of various flora and fauna around Mt. Sedom (“Jebel Usdum”).
Our camp was pitched in front of the Wady Zuweirah, with the northern end of Jebel Usdum (“the Mountain of Salt”) little more than a mile distant in front, and a wild thicket of shrubs of various kinds, and many fine acacia-trees, reaching down to the very shore …
B. had already got a photograph of Jebel Usdum before I came up, and had shot a hare for breakfast tomorrow. Ducks were swimming in large flocks in the sea. U. had shot a water-rail and a coot in the marsh by its edge; and L. had almost gone wild with excitement at the quantity of new and tropical plants in flower which carpet the southern shore. He had already, within an hour, collected sixteen species, new to him, of Indian or Nubian genera, and all in blossom. Even I, as I rode along, could not resist the temptation to leave my horse, and fill both arms with bundles of strange plants, all in luxuriant bloom. The air was delicious, elastic, dry, and warm (some might have called it hot) …
Some almost potable water oozes out in the bed of the Zuweirah, under the shade of a thick scrub, where U. discovered the drinking-place of the gazelles, paddled about by innumerable feet.
Jebel Usdum itself is a solid mass of rock salt of a greenish white transparency, very much the colour of a shallow sea, covered at the top with a loose crust of debris of gravel, rolled flints, and gypsum, but chiefly with a chalky marl. We walked for three miles along its eastern face, in the hope of finding some means of ascending it, but it was quite impracticable. Portions of the salt cliff are continually splitting off and falling, leaving perpendicular faces, and when this is not the case, the debris is far too loose and steep to permit of any climbing.
In several places we found the ground hollow, and echoing under our feet as we walked by the shore, and in some the crust has given way, and a laden camel has suddenly disappeared from the file of a caravan, and been salted to death below.
After returning from our eastern survey of the hill, I immediately set off alone to explore the western face … after several hours of weary toil I found myself, just before sunset, on a pinnacle, but by no means, so far as I could judge by the eye, on the highest peak. With this, however, I had to be content, and having jotted down the readings of the barometer, and the bearings of the compass, had enough to do to find my way out of the labyrinths of the salt glacier before sunset, and crossed the lonely plain in the dark, guided by the distant glimmer of our watch-fire.
The view westwards—splitting as in a miniature estuary, sweep over wide gravelly beds, spotted with the dark green, weather-beaten acacia (A. nilotica), and sparsely carpeted with a profuse variety of tropical shrubs and flowers, which afford sustenance to some hares, and many coveys of the little Hey’s partridge. About a dozen beds are furrowed through the coarse gravelly plain, each about five or six feet deep. In one of these I surprised a herd of twenty-two gazelles, but was not provided with the means of capturing any. Unfortunately none of the sportsmen of the party were with me to secure a dish of venison for next day’s dinner. On Jebel Usdum, and there alone, we obtained specimens of the large black and white Nubian wheatear (Saxicola monacha, Rüpp), a few pair of which were scattered about the edges of the hill; but never elsewhere did we meet with this rare species. Some of our party also employed themselves in searching, but without avail, for life in the Dead Sea, and especially for any traces of the coral (Stylophora pistillata), exhibited in the Museum of Paris as from hence. No person who has examined the southern portion of the lake can for one instant believe that this specimen, or any other coral, ever came from it, unless as a semi-fossil, though microscopic crustaceans may possibly be found, as they live in the salt lagoons close to the shore, but which are not so strongly impregnated with salt. In this shallow part under Usdum, the water may be best characterized as syrup of chloride of sodium. In the brakes and by the edges the sportsmen and collectors were more successful, since ducks, rails, coots, rufous and rock-swallows all were found, besides many warblers, and all the peculiar birds of the Ghor …
The place positively swarmed with birds in countless myriads, rising at every step with the indifference of strangership. There were doves by the score on every bush, large and small (Turtur risorius and T. aegyptius) bulbuls, hopping thrush, shrikes, the gorgeous little sunbird, resplendent in the light, and, once more, our new sparrow. The Abyssinian lark, pipits, and wagtails luxuriated in the moist rills at our feet, which were fringed by drooping tufts of caper (Capparis aegyptiaca) in full flower. All teemed with a prodigality of life.