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Salt
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The Secret of Everyday Things |
by Jean Henri Fabre |
Fascinating conversations with Uncle Paul reveal the mysteries behind the dyeing and weaving of cloth, the lighting and heating of homes, the processing involved in bringing oil, coffee, tea, spices, and other foodstuffs to the table, and the power of water in all its manifestations. Excellent as follow-on to The Story Book of Science. Ages 11-14 | 387 pages |
$14.95 |
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SALT
[203]
ALT, so necessary for the seasoning of our food, is also
very useful as a preservative. The pork stored away
for the winter's use is commonly salted or smoked, or
both, to keep it from spoiling. Beef, too, is salted
down, especially as an article of food for sailors on
long voyages; and vast quantities of fish—cod,
herring, haddock, and mackerel—are preserved with
salt and sent to all parts of the world, even to the
smallest villages remote from the seacoast. From these
various uses to which it is put you will readily
perceive that common salt is one of the most valuable
of substances.
"But if we judged of the usefulness of a substance from
the price it commands in the market, we should fall
into the gravest of errors. For example, the diamond
takes highest rank in respect to price, a price that is
nothing short of exorbitant, but for real use to man,
except as an instrument for cutting glass—and as
such it is commonly employed by glaziers—it
stands very low in the scale. On the other hand, iron,
coal, and salt are among the cheapest of substances,
the price per pound being considered, while at the same
time they are infinitely more useful than the precious
stones, which most often serve only to gratify a
foolish vanity. Providence takes no heed
[204] of this false valuation, but has assigned the highest
importance to iron, coal, and salt by scattering them
in profusion all over the earth, and a very inferior
importance to the diamond by relegating it to some few
remote districts in little-known lands, and that too in
very small quantities.
"Accordingly, salt, like all supplies required by
mankind in general, is very abundant. The sea,
covering as it does three quarters of the earth's
surface, the sea, of such tremendous depth and volume,
holds in its measureless immensity an enormous mass of
salt, since each cubic meter contains nearly thirty
kilograms. If all the oceans should dry up and leave
behind their saline contents, there would be enough
salt to cover the whole earth with a uniform layer ten
meters thick."
"What is the use of all that salt?" asked Marie.
"Its use is to preserve the ocean waters from
corruption despite all the foul matter therein
deposited by the countless denizens of the deep and in
spite of the impurities of every kind unceasingly
poured in as into a common sewer by the rivers, those
great scavangers of the continents."
"They say sea-water is undrinkable," remarked Claire.
"I can well believe it," assented her uncle. "In the
first place, it is very salt, and then it has an acrid,
bitter taste that is unbearable. A single mouthful of
this liquid, clear and limpid though it is, would
produce nausea. Hence it cannot be used in preparing
our food, since it would impart its own repulsive
flavor; nor can it be used for washing clothes,
be- [205] cause soap will not dissolve in it and, more than that,
the clothes in drying would retain an infiltration of
salt just as does the codfish you buy at the grocer's.
"I have already described
to you how salt is gathered
from salt-marshes with the help of the sun's heat to
dry up the water and leave the crystallized salt ready
to be scraped and carried away. Indeed, the sea is an
inexhaustible reservoir of salt: we could never get to
the end of it, however lavishly we salted our food. To
supplement this abundance, the soil itself, the earth,
contains in its depths thick beds of salt which are
worked with pick and drill just as stone for building
is worked in the quarry. This salt that is dug out of
the earth is called rock-salt. It differs from
sea-salt only in its color, which is due to various
foreign substances, being most often yellow or reddish,
sometimes violet, blue, or green. When intended for
table use or cooking, it is purified with water, and
then is undistinguishable from sea-salt.
"There are salt-mines in the departments of Meurthe and
Haute-Saône, but the greatest salt-mine is that in
the neighborhood of Cracow in Poland. Excavations have
there been made to the depth of more than four hundred
meters. The length of the mine exceeds two hundred
leagues, and its greatest width is forty leagues.
"In that bed of salt are hewn out great galleries with
loftier vaults, in some instances, than that of a
church, and extending farther than the eye can reach,
crossing one another in every direction, and forming
[206] an immense city with streets and public squares.
Nothing is lacking to the completeness of this
subterranean town: divine service is held in vast
chapels cut out of the solid salt, and dwellings for
the workmen, as well as stables for the horses employed
in the mine, are likewise hewn out of the same
material. There is a large population, and hundreds of
workmen are born and die there, some of them never
leaving their underground birthplace and never seeing
the light of the sun. Numerous lights, constantly
maintained, illumine the city of salt, and their beams,
reflected from crystalline surfaces on every hand, give
to the walls of the galleries in some places the limpid
and brilliant appearance of glass, and in others cause
them to shine with the beautiful tints of the rainbow.
What magic illumination in those crystal churches when
a thousand candles are reflected by the vaulted roof in
gleams of light of all colors!"
"Yes, it must be a magnificent sigh," Jules assented;
"but, all the same, I should want to come up now and
then into the light of day."
"Undoubtedly; for with all its splendors that
subterranean abode is far inferior to ours. We have
the open air, that pure air with which we delight to
fill our lungs; and we have the sunlight, a vivifying
light that no artificial illumination can equal."
"Nevertheless I should like to see that mine," said
Emile. "What a tremendous grain of salt, to hold whole
towns!"
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