Originally published in The Leisure Hour (Religious Tract Society) vol.1 #4 (22 Jan 1852).
As the comfort of society depends more on acquaintance with common things than on a knowledge of things which are uncommon, we propose to give a few lively lectures on such things as are familiar to us. We had much better know a little of what ministers to our hourly advantage than much of what only confers an occasional benefit. Our daily bread is more important to us than the gems of Golconda and the gold of California. If you agree in this opinion, common things will rise in your estimation, and you will listen with willingness to our lecture on salt.
The very name of salt recommends itself to our attention. It is suggestive of pleasant scenes. We see in our fancy the pure, dry, snowy grains, piled up in the sparkling salt-cellar of cut glass. The clean white table cloth is spread before us; savoury viands are provoking our appetite, and cheerful company is calling up all that is social and friendly in our hearts. One of the earliest jokes on our childhood is to bid us catch a bird by putting salt on his tail.
Salt is found in a natural state as rock salt; it is made from sea water as bay salt; and it is also manufactured from brine springs, or salt-water springs. The salt that we commonly use is of the latter kind. You see, then, that we drag salt from the mine, force it from the fountains of the earth, and wrest it from the raging sea.
Many wise people have been puzzled in vainly trying to explain how rock salt has been produced. "I am inclined to suppose," says one, "that masses of salt, like the rocks which we see around our coast, are part of the original creation, and were intended for great usefulness in the economy of our earthly habitation." Not being enabled ourselves to clear up this mystery, we must leave it unexplained.
Visit Nantwich, Middlewich, or Northwich, in Cheshire, if you wish to see a salt mine. Down the shaft of the mine you go a hundred and fifty feet in a tub, and if the excavations, which extend far and wide, are illuminated, a striking sight will burst upon you. Walls of salt, massy and strong; pillars of salt, more than twenty feet thick, and near fifty feet high, and roofs of salt shining in splendid colours.
A fairy palace bright, far under ground,
With glittering diamonds bespangled round.
Miners are at work, blasting the salt rock with gunpowder, detaching huge masses with pickaxes, and breaking them in pieces with heavy hammers.
One of the mines at Northwich had been worked for a hundred years, when, fortunately for the owner of it, another mine was found below it. The salt in some places is more than seventy feet thick. "It has been calculated," says a visitor to the Northwich mine, "that above fifty thousand tons of salt are extracted from the mines hereabout every year, supplying not only our own nation, but also Ireland, the Baltic, and the north of Europe with this necessary article."
There are many other salt-mines besides those in England. There are vast natural magazines of salt in the mountains of the Tyrol, of Russia, the southern parts of Asia Minor and Peru. Thus does our Almighty Maker provide for our wants.
Thus spread his gifts, and with indulgent plan,
Store up his treasures for the use of man.
The Polish salt mines are famous. They are at least five hundred feet deep, and very extensive. Men, women, and children work in them. Many are born there, and spend in those underground caverns the greatest part of their lives.
The world of waters, the great sea that encircles the earth, is supposed by many to derive its saltness from the unseen rocks of salt, which are incessantly washed by its ever-rolling waters.
Rock salt is not fit for the table without preparation. It is dissolved in water and then boiled in large shallow pans. Eggs, or other coagulable matter, are mingled with the brine, and these, as the water boils, rise to the top in form of a scum, which carries up with it every impurity. The scum is skimmed off, the water is evaporated, and the pure salt remains.
Salt made from brine springs is produced in the same way as the foregoing, by boiling the brine in shallow pans, called salt pans; and bay salt is obtained by exposing sea water to the sun, in shallow pits. At one time salt paid a heavy tax, but this has long since been taken off, so that, now, salt is sold retail at less than a halfpenny a pound. When we want to infer that any one is obtaining but little profit from his calling, we say, "he is hardly getting salt to his porridge." The qualities of salt are many. Salt is granular, white in colour, sparkling, saline, opaque, hard, fusible, soluble, and sapid, or having taste; and its common uses are those of seasoning our food, preserving from putrefaction, and manuring the ground. What we should do were we suddenly deprived of it, is a problem that we are incompetent to solve. Cattle and many animals are fond of salt, and it is a common practice to keep pigeons from wandering astray, by putting a lump of rock salt near their dove-cotes.
In some parts of Africa, salt is formed into round flat cakes, stamped, and passed as money. Were such money to pass amongst us, we should soon abound with money makers.
Salt used to be regarded as a symbol of hospitality and friendship, so much so that a man would not injure a stranger, nor even an enemy, who had eaten salt with him. The spilling of salt is, even now, considered a bad omen by superstitious people.
"The merchant in my power is rich, a blow
Would swell my niggard wealth a hundred fold;
But he has eaten salt with me! no!
I would not injure him for all his gold."
A book has appeared, in which the author rails against salt in good set terms. He says that salt is the "forbidden fruit;" that the wise men of Egypt, and Moses among them, forbade the use of it, and that the real reason why there are so many diseases of body and mind in the world, is because living creatures consume so much salt. His theory is this, that as a child is not nourished by the flesh and blood of its mother, but by her milk only, so a man ought not to be fed by any of the crude materials of which his mother-earth is formed, but by her vegetation. No particle of the earth, except vegetation, should be taken either as food or medicine. So says the author of this singular book.
Every man has a right to his opinion when it has been carefully considered, and prudently formed, but we have an opinion, also, which we are anxious, not dogmatically, but modestly, to maintain. We have strong doubts about Moses ever having forbidden the use of salt; first, because God's holy word does not forbid it, and, secondly, because it appears to us to enjoin it. Without resting on the general texts, "Salt is good," and "Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?" we turn to the books of this very Moses, who is said to have forbidden the use of salt, and find in his third book, called Leviticus, these words: "And every oblation of thy meat-offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt." "And that which is left of the meat-offering shall be Aaron's and his sons: it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire." "If then, the meat-offering was to be seasoned with salt, and that which was left of it was to be eaten by Aaron and his sons, how is this to be reconciled with the supposition that the great lawgiver of the children of Israel forbade the use of salt? We must leave this difficult undertaking to the learned author in question, and, until ‘he has accomplished it, venture to retain our opinion in all its integrity.
What a riot would follow the interdiction of salt! Abolish salt, and we should have a domestic revolution. Reader, what say you? are you ready to give up your beef "a-la-mode," your collared pork, your hams, your neat's tongues, your red herrings, your pickled salmon, and your potted anchovies, without a struggle for them? Are you quite content to eat unsavoury potatoes and tasteless eggs, without a grain of salt? We trust not. We know that our farmer friends will stand up stoutly for their salt beef and their cured bacon; and that thrifty matrons and good housewives will rally round us in defence of their salt pans and pickle tubs. Nay, should things be urged to extremity the consequences may be fatal, for cooks will simultaneously cry out, "War to the knife!" and forthwith arm themselves with their spits and iron skewers.
We cannot but consider salt as one of the estimable gifts of God, bestowed in wisdom and goodness for the benefit of his creatures; and though we are quite ready to admit that an inordinate use of it is prejudicial to health, excess of salt meat producing scurvy, and excess of salt water bringing on insanity, yet are we very confident in our opinion that this necessary and valuable commodity, temperately and prudently partaken of, is as great a promoter of our health as it is of our comfort and enjoyment.
Let such as are anxious for the good of society take from us all the evil things they can, but when they propose to deprive us of our comforts—
In such supposed reforms our cry is, "Halt!
We cannot and we will not spare our Salt."