the American squadron in the Mediter

ranean.

After a journey of three months they landed at Constantinople where the American minister introduced Lynch to the sultan of Turkey. As a result of the audience, Lynch was given a firman that permitted exploration in the sultan's territory and also ordered the governors of Saida and Jerusalem to assist the American expedition in any way. From Constantinople the party traveled along the coast to Beirut and to Acre where Lynch disembarked with his party. The ship was to proceed with its customary duties in the Mediterranean and later return for the expedition at Beirut.

From Acre Lynch and his party started on the overland journey to Tiberias and

the Sea of Galilee with two specially made metal boats-the copper Fanny Mason and the iron Fanny Skinner-on two low trucks. The caravan must have been an imposing sight-two boats with American flags on trucks drawn by camels, officers and seamen mounted on horseback, loaded camels, attendants, and Arabian chieftains with their retinues. After five days the expedition reached the Sea of Galilee, and with flags flying the boats were launched upon the blue waters of the lake. The Arabs sang and clapped their hands in rhythm crying for backsheesh. Because April was the most suitable time for rowing the Jordan, Lynch decided to postpone his survey of the Sea of Galilee and immediately descended the river. Part of the expedition traveled by

boat, while the remainder went on foot as land guards. Each man was assigned certain duties such as mapping the topography of the river and its shores, observing the water volume in the river and its tributaries, and recording the natural features of the valley. Due to the frequent rapids, especially in the section from the Sea of Galilee to the junction of the Yarmuk River, the journey was a succession of dangers and excitement.8.

After an eight-day sail down the Jordan the expedition reached the Dead Sea and began the most important part of the mission. The itinerary included a voyage around the coast starting on the western shore, a survey of the Lisan Peninsula, and finally a journey up the eastern shore. Lynch planned to take frequent soundings by crossing from shore to shore and also scheduled visits to places of interest in the

area.

Immediately after entering the Dead Sea a storm developed, and the expedition was forced to hug the coast. On the second day they encamped on the western shore opposite Wadi Sudeir, a little below Ain Giddy, and selected a site for headquarters, which they named Camp Washington. From there they explored the famous Sebbeth-Masada remains, the last place of Jewish resistance to the Romans. While on the Lisan Peninsula, Lynch named the northern promontory Point Costigan and the southwestern promontory Point Molyneux after the two explorers. Earlier in Tiberias, when Lynch had heard of their sad fates, he had promised, "If God spares us, we will commemorate their gallantry and their devotion to the cause of science." 9

8 For incidents relating to the expedition, see Lynch, Narrative, passim. Costigan and Molyneux made the mistake of rowing the river in the hot months of July and August when the river was at its lowest water. See Ben-Arieh, Changing Landscape, pp. 7-8, 33-34.

9 William F. Lynch, Official Report of the United States' Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan (Baltimore, 1852), p. 36; and Lynch, Narrative, p. 161.

Before leaving the area, the expedition journeyed fifteen miles east to Kerak, a climb of three thousand feet. On May 10, after surveying for twenty-two days, they completed their exploration in the Dead Sea. As a memorial to their visit, Lynch ordered a float bearing an American flag constructed in the lake.

From the Dead Sea the expedition moved to Jerusalem, passing the famous Judean monastery of Mar Saba, then to the Mediterranean near Jaffa several days later, and finally returned to Tiberias in June. Lynch planned to explore the Sea of Galilee but canceled the trip when a boat specially designed to replace the other boats, which had been damaged in the Dead Sea exploration, did not arrive on schedule. Instead, after visiting Lake Hulah and the sources of the Jordan, the expedition pushed on to the Valley of the Litany, Mount Hermon, Damascus, and Baalbek. Accomplishing this in two weeks proved to be exhausting,. especially after the extensive work in the Dead Sea. When sickness overcame the expedition at Baalbek, Lynch quickly moved to Beirut where he had arranged to meet the Supply, but many were sick with fever by the time they reached the city. Among those stricken was Lieutenant Dale, who died a few days later from the same nervous fever that had taken the lives of Costigan and Molyneux. Lynch waited for the Supply for one month, when finally, growing impatient and fearful of disease in the town, he hired another ship and sailed for Malta. In the meantime the Supply, not finding Lynch in Beirut, returned to Malta and rejoined the expedition. On September 12 Lynch and his party sailed for the United States.

Upon his return Lynch published two books about his travels: The Narrative of the United States' Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea and the Official Report of the United States' Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. The former was written hurriedly because

Lynch learned that another member of the expedition was about to publish his own account of the journey.10 In the preface to the book Lynch discussed the purpose of the expedition and justified its expense to the American people who, he hoped, "would not long condemn an attempt to explore a distant river, and its wondrous reservoir, the first, teeming with sacred associations, and the last, enveloped in a mystery, which had defied all previous attempts to penetrate it." In the first part of the book he listed the names and functions of each member of the party, the preparations for the voyage and the Atlantic crossing, and a detailed account of the exploration in the Holy Land including thirty woodcuts depicting the people and events of the trip. The second book, the Official Report,11 was very different from the Narrative, which contained material he believed unsuitable for a public document. The Official Report consisted of governmental documents concerning the expedition, minutes taken during the descent of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, reports by members of the expedition on the bird and plant life and the geology of the region. In addition, the book contained astronomical, thermometric, and barometric tables, an analysis of Dead Sea water, a table of meteorological observations, a map of the route and camps of the expedition, and sketch maps of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Unlike the Narrative, it did not include drawings of the landscape. In his day Lynch's expedition was hailed as one of the greatest scientific explorations of the Holy Land. Schol

...

10 For information on Lynch's books, see also Max Meisel, Bibliography of American Natural History (New York, 1929), 3:42. Edward P. Montague, a seaman in Lynch's party, published an account of the expedition, Narrative of the late Expedition to the Dead Sea (Philadelphia, 1849), but the book is unreliable.

11 The report was issued previously in February 1849 as Report of the Secretary of the Navy with a Report made by Lieutenant W. F. Lynch of an examination of the Dead Sea, Senate Ex. Doc. 34, pp. 1-88, 30 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 532.

ars eagerly awaited the publication of his books, and the Narrative with its maps and drawings was rapidly published in many different editions.12 Lynch was regarded as a hero, an explorer who had braved much, persevered, and accomplished work of great significance to science. In the Official Report he himself had written with optimism and pride:

The exploration of this [the Dead Sea] was now complete; we had carefully sounded its depths, determined its geographical position, taken topographical sketches of its shores, ascertained the temperature, width, depth, velocity of its tributaries, collected specimens of its own and of its tributary waters and of every kind of mineral, plant, and flower, and noted the winds, currents, changes of weather and all atmospheric phenomena. These with a succinct account of events exactly as they transpired will give a correct idea of this sea as it has appeared to us. The same remark holds with respect to the Jordan and the country through which it flows.13

Although Lynch certainly overestimated his accomplishments in the Dead Sea, which even today has not been fully investigated, his achievements on the whole were enormous. He was, and is still acknowledged to be, the greatest explorer of the region. He was the first to draw an accurate and detailed map of the Jordan and the Dead

12 When Ritter wrote his Comparative Geography he stressed his eagerness to obtain Lynch's report on the Jordan, which was still not available (2:287), and in a later volume in dealing with the Dead Sea he devoted more than forty pages to a summary of the report (3:130-173). See also Jesse A. Spencer, The East: Sketches of Travel in Egypt and the Holy Land (New York, 1850), p. 385, for a sketch map of the Dead Sea reduced from Lynch's 1848 map. Five additional editions of the Narrative were published in Philadelphia in 1849, followed in 1850 by a seventh edition. The same year a London edition was published as well as a new, condensed version containing one small map.

13 Lynch, Official Report, p. 42; and Bliss, Development of Palestine Exploration, p. 238.

Sea. He confirmed the level of the Dead Sea and drew an accurate bathymetric map. Until the time of the British mandate, when scientific exploration was again undertaken, his expedition provided the most definitive knowledge of the area.

For the geographer and historian, Lynch's books, especially the Narrative, are sources for evaluating and understanding the cultural and physical changes in the Holy Land since 1847. Details in contemporary maps of the Dead Sea, for example, bathymetric points on the Jordanian side, are based on Lynch's measurements. Recent studies on the fluctuations in the level of the Dead Sea in the nineteenth century, the meanders of the Jordan, and the shift of the outlet of the Jordan from the Galilee have relied on Lynch's maps. The Official Report and the Narrative also provide information about historical relics no longer extant. A devout Christian, Lynch regarded the Jordan and surrounding country as sacred and paid strict attention to remnants of bridges, khans, milestones, caves, buildings, ancient agricultural cultivations, wells, and cisterns. Lynch's works, especially the Narrative, give a vivid picture of the cultural landscape of the region in the midnineteenth century, which was the beginning of the modern age in Palestine. Events in Palestine since the expedition, especially

those of the twentieth century, have destroyed many of these sites, and Lynch's studies as well as those of other nineteenthcentury explorers will provide the necessary detail in reconstructing many of these monuments.14

Today Lynch is praised not only because he was the first pioneer to successfully descend the Jordan to the Dead Sea but also because after more than a century he is still acknowledged to be the greatest explorer of the Jordan Valley. While his writings may be considered perhaps typical of the journals of many explorers who came there in the nineteenth century, only Lynch's books contain such rich detail and careful observation.15 The Narrative and the Official Report stand as classic studies of the Middle East.

14 Atlas of Israel, s.v. "hydrology," for the Dead Sea map and text; Zippora Klein, On the Fluctuations of the Level of the Dead Sea since the Beginning of the 19th Century (Jerusalem, 1961); Isaac Schattner, The Lower Jordan Valley: A Study of the Fluvimorphology of an Arid Region (Jerusalem, 1962); Ben-Arieh, "The Shift of the Outlet of the Jordan at the Southern Shore of Lake Tiberias," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 97 (1965): 54-65. On Lynch, the man and the personality, see Boggis, Down the Jordan, pp. 22-25.

15 Ben-Arieh, Rediscovery of the Holy Land, p. 112. The most detailed bibliography on travelers who visited the Holy Land and published their impressions is Reinhold Rohricht, Bibliotheca Geographica Paletinae (Berlin, 1890).

At the 1933 Pan American Conference in Montevideo, the Roosevelt administration announced its intention to use bilateral trade agreements as a keystone of its Latin American policy. Preliminary exchanges with several nations were initiated during the summer of that year, although the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act was not passed until 1934.1 American diplomats confronted in these talks unanticipated difficulties arising from the nature of the economies involved. Negotiations with Guatemala, conducted between 1933 and 1936, provide a case study of the problems of concluding such agreements with underdeveloped countries.

In theory, reciprocal agreements to reduce tariffs would benefit all nations by increasing trade and stimulating the economies of the participants. Some theorists. even envisaged extension of these agreements virtually to the point of free trade, since each contained a most-favored-nation clause that automatically granted the benefits of other protocols to signatories. Mutual concessions would enable the respective nations to specialize, expanding principal

1 Department of State press release, July 13, 1933, O.K. Copies, Division of Current Information, vol. 15, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives Building.

industries to take advantage of local production efficiency. Abolition of tariff hindrances would allow the most efficient foreign producers to undersell domestic competitors, thus extending the benefit of reduced prices to consumers while furnishing them with superior products. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was particularly enthusiastic about the potential of the program for promoting a new era of international free trade. At the least, he felt, it would resurrect the American economy from the doldrums of the depression.2

The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 enabled advocates of free trade to test their theories. The law empowered the president to reduce existing tariffs up to 50 percent or to freeze existing rates by means of bilateral agreements, the terms of which would not require Senate approval. To supervise negotiations, the State Department organized a special section, which in 1935 became the Division of Trade Agreements. An interdepartmental Committee on Trade Agreements was also established because the cooperation of numerous execu

2 Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, 2 vols. (New York, 1948), 1:357; Julius W. Pratt, Cordell Hull: 1934-44, in The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (New York, 1964), 12:112-113.