Saltworks

“ This is left to stand and give the impurities a chance to settle to the bottom. Then it is allowed to flow into smaller basins, while more water is pumped into the reservoir. When autumn comes, the crop of salt is ready to be harvested. It is in the form of a crust three to six inches thick, some of it in large crystals, and some fine-grained. This crust is broken by ploughs, and the salt is heaped up into great cones and left for the rain to wash clean. Then it goes to the mill for purifying. The water of Great Salt Lake is much more salty than that of the ocean. ”

“ The whole of the sea-shore in the neighbourhood of the salt works is measured out and divided into a number of small, regular squares; the surface layer in each is11 dug out; the bottom of each pit thus formed is then strewn with straw, and the earth that has been removed is thrown back upon it. When these brine ovens, as they were called—which are shaped like chests, 9 ft. long, 2 ft. broad, and 3 ft. deep—are prepared, they are soaked with sea-water. The sea-water in the interior of the ovens forms brine, and flows through little ditches into wells which have been dug for its reception. ”

“ Every shower of rain creates a certain amount of mud or sand, and every brook and stream running into the salt lakes during the rainy season brings in a certain quantity of the same material. The mud represents the wet season of the year, and the salt the dry season. The geological conditions must have been the same when salt was deposited in Cheshire, and with the instances of modern salt-forming regions before us, and the strata of the Cheshire salt country to guide us, it must be concluded that the genesis of rock-salt, modified by local circumstances, must have been the same in every case. ”

“ The primitive methods that characterized the brine industry have been adhered to with equal tenacity in the winning of rock-salt. It is extraordinary that, in the manufacture and in the mining of salt, each successive generation of salt-men, in inheriting their methods from their forefathers, or adapting them from the miners of another country, have always preserved the intense conservatism that appears to be inseparable from the industry, and have resisted all innovations that have promised to simplify or expedite their labours. ”

“ THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALT INDUSTRY Salt, being existent in all animal and vegetable life, is coeval with life itself; it was present in the first herbage which gave nourishment to the first beast that, in its turn, became food for the first omnivorous man. In the beginning, man consumed the saline essences that were required to preserve his body in health, in the form of sodium chloride, which he absorbed in the uncooked flesh of animals, birds, and fishes, and in raw green-foods. ”

“ About one thirtieth of the ocean water is salt, and if the water is evaporated, the salt can be collected without difficulty. France makes a great deal of salt in this way. When a man goes into the manufacture, or rather, the collecting of salt, he first of all buys or rents a piece of land,—perhaps several acres of it,—that lies just above high water, and makes it as level as possible. Unless it is very firm land, he covers it with clay, so that the water will not soak through it. ”

“ For a time, a cycle of dry seasons prevailed; a great change occurred, and a bed of rock-salt, 84 ft. in thickness, was deposited. In other parts, the bed of rock-salt varies from 80 ft. to over 100 ft. in thickness, none of which is perfectly pure, and not more than 20 ft. of it is sufficiently pure to be of commercial use. The greatly changed seasons are indicated by these formations. A portion near the bottom, containing less clay, shows a less copious or less protracted rainfall, and these periods were followed by wet seasons and the presence of much clay. ”

“ But when the saturated brine is pumped up and its place is taken with a new supply of water which collects its tribute from the salt strata, and that water, in its turn, is raised, to be replaced by more, and when it is known that each 100 tons of water that traverses the salt-bed to the pumps carries away with it 25 tons of solid earth, the work of destruction that is continually going on is explained. ”

“ I am told that the mountains are full of salt—how wonderful are the works of the Lord! In pursuit of this mineral Man has penetrated deep into the bowels of the earth by means of shafts and tunnels, and brings forth the bitter marrow of the hills into the light of the sun. The salt I have myself seen in red, brown and yellow crystals. The works give employment to our peasants and their sons, with a few foreign labourers, all under the command of an overseer, who is known as the Saltmaster. ”

“ This conclusion on the subject, which is now generally accepted, is based on the theory that the Cheshire salt lake was situated in a desert, or more probably a salty steppe , such as are found in the region of the Caspian Sea, and that the climate was divided into wet and dry seasons. The presence of rock-salt supports these ideas, because the marls could only be formed in periods of heavy rainfall, and the salt could only crystallize out in dry, water-evaporating periods. ”

“ The facts that the chief accompaniment of every known deposit of rock-salt is clay, and that clay is deposited in water, formed the basis of the erroneous theory that because salt is a deposit out of water, and sea-water contains salt, all salt beds must have been deposited in the sea. But salt does not mix mechanically with water and has not been deposited like sedimentary rocks; it forms a solution, and not until the solution becomes super-saturated does it crystallize out. Now sea-water rarely contains more than 31⁄2 per cent. ”

“ The amount of SALT in the ocean is a circumstance which geologists have not, I think, sufficiently considered. This salt, if precipitated, would, it is believed, yield a solid range of mountains equal to that of the entire Himalaya. Now, mighty rivers run into the sea, as those of La Plata, Amazons, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Orinoko, and many others; but none of these rivers are salt; they are enormous bodies of fresh water. How, then, does the ocean maintain everywhere its saline character unimpaired? ”

“ Most of the common salt (the mineral “halite”) of commercial value occurs in nature in sea or salt lake water; or in beds or strata of rock salt associated with other strata; or as natural brine in openings or pores in certain rocks. Considerable salt is obtained by evaporation of tidewater, as around San Francisco Bay, and of salt lake water, as at Great Salt Lake, Utah. It has been estimated that the Great Salt Lake, whose area is about 2,000 square miles and greatest depth 50 feet, contains several hundred million tons of common salt. ”

“ SALT. Geological Position of Rock Salt—Mines of Northwich—Their immense Excavations—Droitwich and Stoke—Wieliczka—Berchtesgaden and Reichenhall—Admirable Machinery—Stassfurt—Processes employed in the Manufacture of Salt—Origin of Rock-salt Deposits.
Common salt is so necessary to man, and of such vast importance to the manufacturer and agriculturist, that the processes by which it is obtained are justly reckoned among the chief branches of industry.
In many of the warmer countries of the globe it is procured simply by the evaporation of sea-water in shallow lagoons ”

“ We crossed the Monongahela near its mouth, in a skiff, to a salt-work on the left bank. With the earth-borer invented in England, and improved in America, they found salt water at the depth of a hundred feet. As this water was thought to be too weak, a pipe was placed in the well, and bored in another place, until at the depth of a hundred feet a sufficiently strong brine was obtained. The salt water collected and rose to the top. It is now pumped out by a small steam-engine into a boiler, where it is boiled for four hours. ”

“ The system of canals through which it passes is of a complicated nature; and the production of the salt constitutes, so to speak, a special branch of agriculture, where the visible help of man assists the hidden work of Nature. The ground must be dug and arranged in a particular manner, that the saline particles may crystallise, just as a field where wheat grows and ripens. Thus, it is not surprising that the salt-workers adopt the professional terms of the farmers. ”

“ That special “salt” is the queer looking little thing in the centre of the salt group, and I am giving it more space than its size or appearance seem to warrant. It was first caught sight of in a shop at Leeds, where a broker had it filled with black varnish into which he was dipping his brush, while he was giving an artistic touch-up to some of his stock. The hunter spotted pewter, and after some little chaff was told he could have it if he would bring something that would do for holding the varnish; this he bought at a shop not far off, and the change was soon effected. ”

“ Every one who gets the chance should visit one of the salt mines, some of which have been worked over a thousand years. The salt is so pure that it can be hewed out in great blocks and cubes, and the air is full of the dust which settles down in a fine white powdered frost like the artificial frosting of a Christmas card. ”

“ The salt is gathered around the edge of the lake, either by the men themselves or by other people with whom they trade. If the salt is dry it is carried home in bags but if it is gathered while wet, it is patted into balls which, when dried, are hard as rocks. ”

“ In each gallon of river or rain water dissolve about six ounces of sea-salt, either by stirring it or suspending it in the water in a linen or muslin bag. It dissolves as readily in cold as in hot water. Sea-salt is produced by evaporation of sea-water. Common salt is sometimes supplied in place of it; but the genuine sea-salt, manufactured by well-known firms, which can be procured of any grocer or of most chemists, is specially prepared to enable persons to have a salt-water bath at home. ”

“ The customs of each tribe depend partly on which district of this large country they live in. Those who live near the salt sea eat sea-fish, and get salt by boiling the sea-water in their cooking-pots until the pot is quite dry, and then the salt is left behind after the water has gone. It was clever of those people to find out they could get salt that way. Others, who live near the great rivers, make canoes out of the tree-trunks with the inside hollowed out. ”

“ Next in importance to the building of a winter camp was the fixing of a place where salt could be made. Salt is absolutely necessary for the comfort of man, and the supply brought out from the United States by the explorers was now nearly all gone. They were provided with kettles in which sea-water could be boiled down and salt be made. It would be needful to go to work at once, for the process of salt-making by boiling in ordinary kettles is slow and tedious ”

“ The saline substances are brought down by rain, which washes the soil and percolates through the rocky ledges, and by the rivers, which are generally estimated to contain from ten to one hundred grains of salt per gallon, [3] and here probably more, owing to the abundance of soda. The evaporation is, of course, nearly pure, containing but very minute traces of salts.
It has been generally stated that the water is fatal to organic life. The fish brought down the rivers perish at once in the concentrated brine ”

“ Considering that the salt rivers are themselves salted by passing through salt regions, or being fed by saline springs, all of which derive their saltness from deposits laid down long ago by evaporation from earlier seas or lake basins, this explanation savours somewhat of circularity. It amounts in effect to saying that the sea is salt because of the large amount of saline matter which it holds in solution. Cheese is also a caseous preparation of milk; the duties of an archdeacon are to perform archidiaconal functions; and opium puts one to sleep because it possesses a soporific virtue. ”

“ I only mean if we want salt we can have as much as we please by boiling down salt-water in the kettle, or else making a salt-pan in the rocks, and obtaining it by the sun drying up the water and leaving the salt. ”

“ The difficulty of explaining how the salt in this lake could be renewed to enable the waters to go on depositing for a geologic age is recognized, but it is no greater than that which is presented by scores of existing salt lakes out of which thousands of tons of salt are taken annually without causing any apparent diminution in the salt which forms year by year. And when it is considered that, in a lake having a probable area of from 500 to 1,000 square miles, the known salt deposits do not occupy 50 square miles, and in many portions contain 50 per cent. ”

“ However distant the connection may seem, our salt is always in the last resort obtained from the material held in solution in some ancient or modern sea. Even the saline springs of Canada and the Northern States of America, where the wapiti love to congregate, and the noble hunter lurks in the thicket to murder them unperceived, derive their saltness, as an able Canadian geologist has shown, from the thinly scattered salts still retained among the sediments of that very archaic sea whose precipitates form the earliest known life-bearing rocks. ”