Salt
a well known crystalline substance. Chemically, it is a compound of chlorine and sodium, an atom of each. It is one of the most widely distributed, most important, substances in nature. Pure salt is colorless. Its specific gravity is 2.2. It crystallizes in cubes. Salt forms three per cent or sixty pounds to the ton of ordinary sea water. Immense deposits, laid down, no doubt, by former seas, occur like coal measures. In this form it is called rock salt. The most remarkable deposit of rock salt is worked near the city of Cracow in Austrian Poland. There are mines also in India and in Germany. Rock salt is found in Virginia and in Louisiana.
The American supply of salt is obtained chiefly by evaporating brine. Sea water confined in reservoirs and allowed to evaporate under the heat of the sun yields immense quantities of salt. This method is pursued on the Pacific coast and on the shore of Great Salt Lake. There are extensive salt works at Alvarado, twenty miles from San Francisco. They are protected by a system of dikes. Sea water is admitted as desired. The brine is moved by means of windmills. When a reservoir has been dried out thoroughly, the salt is plowed and scraped up into heaps by horse graders, and is loaded on cars by steam shovels.
The waters of salt springs, coming, no doubt, from beds of rock salt, occur in several states. The brine is obtained by boring and pumping. What are known as the salt springs of Onondaga were bought by the state of New York from the Indians. Private parties are permitted to make salt by paying the state a royalty of one cent a bushel. The process of evaporation by solar heat is too slow. Enormous evaporating plants have been constructed. The brine is boiled down by means of steam heat. In 1900 the New York springs, including the Syracuse, Warsaw, and Genesee districts, yielded 4,894,852 barrels of salt. In the same year similar salt springs of Saginaw Bay and Manistee, Michigan, yielded the still larger product of 5,206,510 barrels. Kansas produced 1,645,350 barrels; Ohio, 1,460,516 barrels. California, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Louisiana, Virginia, and Pennsylvania followed in the order named, with a production of from 640,000 to 140,000 barrels each.
In France, Germany, and India table salt pays a special government tax like that collected on cigars and tobacco in this country. In Italy, Austria, and China the government monopolizes the business of making and selling salt.
Salt appears to be one of the necessities of life. Many plants cannot grow except in a salty soil. Horses, cattle, sheep, and all wild animals of the deer and antelope kind require salt. They suffer if without it. They obtain a partial supply in vegetable food. Salt licks, that is to say, briny springs or salty land the world over are frequented by hoofed wild animals. Even timid deer will encounter almost any danger to get a lick of salt. The salt licks of Kentucky are surrounded by the bones of countless generations of buffalo and deer, showing that they were visited for centuries. Animals of the dog and cat tribes, living largely on flesh, seem indifferent to salt.
Even the rudest people desire salt. Mungo Park states that the interior chieftains of Africa were willing to sell their wives and children for small amounts of salt. In one tribe the expression,"he eats salt," is equivalent to saying that a man is rich. We learn that the Germanic tribes fought for the possession of the salt wells at Halle and elsewhere. About 1810 a mine of rock salt was found on the island of Petite Anse in Louisiana. On exploration, aboriginal tools were found, showing that the mine had been worked by prehistoric man.
Bacteria cannot live in a solution of salt. Salt was used to cure meats and to put down pickles long before any one knew that putrefaction was due to microscopic plants or germs. The picture of a putrid sea drawn by Coleridge in the Ancient Mariner,
That ever this could be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea,
would soon become true, were it not for the anti-bacterial--the preservative--quality of salt.
Butter and cheese are salted not only to suit the taste, but to preserve them. Hides are salted for the same purpose. Wood may be salted to prevent decay. Salt is used in the manufacture of glass, in the preparation of a bleaching mixture, in the manufacture of soap, and the smelting of silver. A sprinkling of salt increases the fertility of worn out land. Alkali lands have too much salt.
Salt has received mention in literature. Homer calls it divine. Following the analogy that wit seasons conversation as salt seasons cookery, it is called "Attic salt." When Ben Jonson says, "I have no salt,"he means that his wit fails him. To take a statement with "a grain of salt" is to make allowance for exaggeration. An "old salt" is one who has followed a seafaring life. Salt was given a prominent place midway down the table in the old English dining hall. Menials and those of low degree sat below the salt. To sit "above the salt" was a mark of social distinction. Salt is an emblem of hospitality. The Arab will not treat as an enemy one who has eaten salt at his table.