A City of Salt

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22391, 11 April 1936, Page 9 (Supplement)

A City of Salt

p|AN you imagine an underground city ' made entirely of salt? rlt sounds like one of Grimm's fairy tales, doesn't it? Yet there is sucli a place, and it has more than 1000 people living in it. There are streets, railway stations, churches, lifts, staircases, dancing halls, all of them hewn out of rough, •hard, sparkling rock crystals, which blaze like precious stones under the electric light. It even has its own lakes and rivers, and these, of course, are Bait, too. /

How did tliis strange salt city come jto be there? It was built in a huge salt mine, which has been worked since the thirteenth century, and is still working. [The mine is at Wieliczka, Poland, and is probably the largest in the world, for its rock salt deposits extend for 500 jniles, and are 20 miles wide and 1200 feet deep. ~ , Salt is one of the world's most valutble possessions, for without it we could Jiot live. You have heard of animals m some countries travelling sometimes for hundreds of miles to reach salt springs fend pools, haven't you? And you have fceen how eagerly the sheep and cattle tush for the salt lick? That is because palt is so very necessary to our bodies. Thousands, of years ago salt was looked upon as something sacred salt end incense were the two most important articles in life. We read of a "covenant of salt" in the Bible, when Bait was included in all offerings, and often debts were paid in salt instead of in money or other forms of wealth. Even to-day cakes of salt are used as money in parts of Abyssinia, Africa and Thibet, and the natives of Sierra Leone 'are ready t</ sell their wives for salt. In the days of ancient Rome an allowiance of salt was made to the soldiers, and later they were given instead money with which to buy salt. That is iwhere the word "salary" came from — la soldier's salt money was his "salary." ; We obtain salt in three chief ways. iOne is by evaporation from the sea.; tinother is by digging rocli salt from the mines, and another is by pumping trine out of the earth. There are salt •fields in the south of Europe, where channels have been cut to allow the s , Ea to flow into shallow beds. There the jwater lies until the sun evaporates it ,®J>d leaves behind a deposit of salt. As .the salt is deposited people rake it out of the brine.

As many as 80,000 tons of salt are fcewn out every year from a huge mine tot Slanic, in Rumania, but even if [IOO,OOO tons a year were taken from this mina the supply would not be exhausted for 200 years. In parts of xvorth America much salt is gathered from deserts which, long ages ago, were covered with salt water. The sun evaporated the water, leaving the salt behind in huge deposits. In one of these illustrations you will see how tho salt is ploughed up in tho desert and raked into heaps. . There are /nany famous salt deposits in England, at Northwich, in Cheshire; JJroitwieh, Middleborough and other places. The larger of these .two pictures, «aken in England, shows what sometimes happens when salt is mined in a district. Naturally, large cavities are nade when the salt is taken away, and /erv often the earth subsides, and anv A

houses that are above the mine are in danger of collapsing, and have to be shored up. Water seops into the cavities and becomes brino, which is then pumped into tanks. Salt is obtained from many countries, from the continents of Europe, North and South America, India and others. It is also found in Australia at Lake Tyrrell, near Sea Lake, Victoria, where the lake bed looks like a huge field of snow. The salt is scraped up with a scraper, and it is expected that 15,000 tons, worth 2os a ton at the works, will be obtained this season.,