< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu
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246

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the condiment became quite unknown to the common people, who quite lost their taste for it.[1]

In Pliny's time salt was considered a valuable medicament for various ailments. It was taken to neutralize the effects of opium, and above all it was valued as a cure for leprosy.

The most common artificial salt is made by evaporating sea water in salt pans. It is also produced by pouring salt water upon burning wood, the ashes of which are said to have almost the pungency of the true mineral. When thus prepared the salt is black. In Arabia, according to Pliny, so many salt mines were found that people resorted to them instead of quarries, building whole houses and even cities of this mineral. Gerrah was entirely composed of it.

One of the most remarkable salt mines in the world is at Wieliczka, near Warsaw, Poland. It has been worked since 1252, and at one time furnished the principal revenue of the kingdom. A vast number of people inhabit the subterranean passages of this mine, and are governed by laws and magistrates of their own. Each miner is allotted a little cell, where he dwells and rears his family. As many as eighty horses are kept in this underground republic to carry to and fro along the immense corridors which are supported by pillars of salt. When the light falls down the long vistas it makes the mine look like a crystal palace, of which the walls and pillars are tinged with delicate green.[2]

Outside of the timber belt, which begins at Monterey and extends at intervals to Oregon, there is hardly a mountain on the Coast Range of California, from San Diego, on the south, to Trinity, almost at the Oregon line, says Carl Purdy, in Garden and Forest, which is not in part covered by the chemise brush, or chemisal. The greater the distance from the ocean the larger the percentage of mountain lands which this hardy shrub has taken possession of, until many sections of the eastern part of the Coast Range are almost given up to it, and from the valleys to the mountain tops it holds a sway only shared by a few of the hardiest shrubs, oaks, and conifers. Hardly a spot is too steep to allow it a foothold, hardly a soil too meager to afford it sustenance. Fires sweep over and leave blackened stubs, but with its unusual vitality it soon starts a new growth. In a few years rocks, hills, and slopes are again masked by a close color of blue green, which gives to the mountains a softness of outline peculiar to the Coast Range, and very beautiful too, although the monotony of flowing lines often becomes tiresome. The chemise (Adenostoma fascicularis) is of the rose family, and is an evergreen with linear, heathlike leaves, a light-colored, stinging bark, and brittle wood. In late spring it produces an abundance of whitish flowers with green centers.
  1. ↑ Bancroft. Works on Native Races.
  2. ↑ Valmont de Bomare, tome v, p. 591
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