METHOD OF OBTAINING SEA SALT.

17

and placed in heaps, which are thatched over, to preserve them from the weather. This work

occupies from May to August. If the season be favourable, the manufacturers can thus obtain from the sea, in two or three weeks, salt enough for the whole kingdom; but they also make much more, and export it to other nations.

The heat of the sun under the torrid zone is sufficient to evaporate pools of salt water; a large quantity of salt is thus produced, and may be easily collected. But the sun has scarcely power enough in England for this process: yet, in Kent and Hampshire, there are pits of this kind, in which the water is so far evaporated by the sun, that a small degree of boiling finishes the process, and produces the salt.

made during the hot months, and

The brine is

kept in large

cisterns, to be boiled at leisure. The boiling is sometimes continued till the end of the year.

с

SALT LAKES.

SOME inland lakes and morasses are impregnated with salt. A lake of this kind is found in Southern Africa, at a distance from the sea, and upon a height. The water which it receives during the rainy season becomes strongly impregnated with salt; in the succeeding hot weather this water is evaporated, and the salt is left at the bottom of the lake, two or three feet in depth. In the island of Isonming, near the coast of China, the earth is in some places so full of salt, that the natives dig it out to the depth of a foot. This earth they carry to their saltworks, where they soak it in water in large shallow wooden vessels; and, by afterwards boiling the water, they obtain pure salt.

SALT.

POLAND.

BUT," said James, "what are the Polish saltmines, of which I have heard such wonders?"

"Several travellers have visited those mines, and have given us accounts of them perhaps some extracts from their descriptions may afford you instruction and amusement.

"The mines of Cracow, as they are frequently called, though they are indeed between six and eight miles from that city, are at a village named Wielitska, situated on a ridge of hills, adjoining the Carpathian mountains. The mode of descent into the mine, at the principal opening, is by means of hammocks, fastened to a great rope, by which the loads of salt are drawn up. We were let down gently,' says Mr. Coxe, 'without any

6

20

SALT-MINE OF WIELITSKA.

apprehension of danger, although the depth was almost five hundred feet' (one quarter as high again as St. Paul's). When the travellers stepped out of their hammocks, they were not at their journey's end, for they had yet to descend a slope, which in some places was very broad; in others, the pathway was cut in the rock, into stairs, which were rather slippery, but, being wide, and glittering with the lights which the visitors carried, had the appearance of a grand staircase in a palace. To some lower places the descent was by ladders. Every visitor and his guide carried a light, which occasioned a considerable and peculiarly brilliant effect. Mr. Wraxall describes one vast chamber in these salt works, in which, he says, 'a thousand people might dine without inconvenience;' it was so large, indeed, that the flambeaux hardly enabled him to discern the sides; it seemed without limits.