We made a somewhat singular discovery when travelling among the
mountains to the east of the Dead Sea, where the ruins of Ammon Jerash
and Ajoloun well repay the labour and fatigue encountered in visiting
them. It was a remarkably hot and sultry day. We were scrambling up
the mountain through a thick jungle of bushes and low trees, which
rises above the east shore of the Dead Sea, when I saw before me a
fine plum-tree, loaded with fresh blooming plums. I cried out to my
fellow-traveller: 'Now, then, who will arrive first at the plum-tree?'
and as he caught a glimpse of so refreshing an object, we both pressed
our horses into a gallop, to see which would get the first plum from
the branches. We both arrived at the same moment; and, each snatching
at a fine ripe plum, put it at once into our mouths, when, on biting
it, instead of the cool, delicious juicy fruit which we expected, our
mouths were filled with a dry bitter dust, and we sat under the tree
upon our horses, sputtering, and hemming, and doing all we could to be
relieved of the nauseous taste of this strange fruit. We then
perceived, and to my great delight, that we had discovered the famous
apple of the Dead Sea, the existence of which has been doubted and
canvassed since the days of Strabo and Pliny, who first described it.
Many travellers have given descriptions of other vegetable productions
which bear analogy to the one described by Pliny; but, up to this
time, no one had met with the thing itself, either upon the spot
mentioned by the ancient authors or elsewhere.--_Curzon's Visits to
Monasteries in the Levant._