It was because they were not ripe, perhaps.
The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or about its borders to cheer the eye.

It is a scorching, arid, repulsive solitude.

A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the spirits.

It makes one think of funerals and death.
The Dead Sea is small.

Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores.