Cuthbert, who was weary and aching in every limb from the position in which he had been placed on the camel, asked them by signs for permission to bathe in the lake.
This was given, principally apparently from curiosity, for but very few Arabs were able to swim; indeed, as a people they object so utterly to water, that the idea of any one bathing for his amusement was to them a matter of ridicule.
Cuthbert, who had never heard of the properties of the Dead Sea, was perfectly astonished upon entering the water to find that instead of wading in it up to the neck before starting-to swim, as he was accustomed to do at home, the water soon after he got waist-deep took him off his feet, and a cry of astonishment burst from him as he found himself on rather than in the fluid.

The position was so strange and unnatural that with a cry of alarm he scrambled over on to his feet, and made the best of his way to shore, the Arabs indulging in shouts of laughter at his astonishment and alarm.

Cuthbert was utterly unable to account for the strange sensations he had experienced; he perceived that the water was horribly salt, and that which had got into his mouth almost choked him.
He was, however, unaware that saltness adds to the weight of water, and so to the buoyancy of objects cast into it.

The saltness of the fluid he was moreover painfully conscious of by the smarting of the places on his wrists and ankles where the cords had been bound that fastened him to the camel.

Goaded, however, by the laughter of the Arabs, he determined once more to try the experiment of entering this strange sheet of water, which from some unaccountable cause appeared to him to refuse to allow anybody to sink in it.