Salt

	Salt From John Bell, A Journey from St Petersburg to Pekin, 1719-22: Solikamsky is famous for having many salt-pits in its neighbourhood, the property of my worthy friend Baron Stroganof, by virtue of a grant from his majesty. The Baron has brought these works to such perfection, that he is able to serve all Russia with salt; and could besides furnish a considerable quantity for exportation, were there any demand. The salt is of a brownish colour, and very good of the kind. The common method of procuring this salt is as follows: They dig Pits in the earth till they come to the salt-rock, which seems to ly in these parts at a certain distance from the surface, as coals do in other places of the world. When the pit is finished, it is naturally, and of course, filled with water; which standing for a convenient time, till it is sufficiently impregnated with the salt, is then drawn out with pumps and other engines, and put into large iron caldrons, where it is boiled to a proper consistence; when, the water being evaporated, the salt is left upon the bottom. I was informed of another curious and extraordinary process, by which they draw salt-water from a fresh-water river, which I cannot omit taking notice of. In the rivers near this place there is a mixture of salt-water arising from the springs, which either have their source in the salt-rocks, or run through them: it is the business of the inhabitants to discover the places where these springs empty themselves into the rivers, which they do by diving, or some other manner; having done this, they make a large frame of strong thick balks or beams joined very close, about fifteen or twenty feet square, and of depth enough to reach the bottom of the river, while part of it remains above the surface; when the ice is very strong they sink this machine into the river, over the place where the salt spring issues, and drive strong piles of wood all around, to hinder its being forced from this position by the current, or by floating ice in the end of winter. During the winter they draw out all the water, mud and sand, contained within the machine, and sink it still deeper until it hath penetrated the bottom of the channel of the river, and prevented all further communication between it and the salt spring: the frame is now filled only with the salt-water, issuing from the spring, from whence it is drawn, and the salt extracted as formerly described. However tedious and expensive this process may seem, these people perform it with great readiness and ease; and, what is still more extraordinary, without regular instruction in any art subservient to that purpose, but by the mere force of natural genius. The Baron has a great number of hands constantly employed in this service. And the woods for fewel are inexhaustible. When the salt is made, it is laid up in granaries, till the season of transporting it to Mosco, St Petersburg and other places: the barques, for this purpose, called by the Russians Lodia, are of a construction somewhat uncommon. I have seen some of them longer and broader than any first rate man of war in England, and not one iron-nail in the whole fabrick. All of them are flat-bottomed, having one tall tree for a mast, and a sail of light canvass in proportion. To manage this mighty machine, six or eight hundred men are necessary; the rudder is nearly as long as the barque; and so unwieldy, that sometimes it requires forty or fifty men to steer it. They load these ships very deep, and let them float down the Kama into the Volga; where, if the wind is not favourable, they are obliged to draw them, against the stream, to the place of their destination. From Count Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 1908-1909: We left Chimion in the evening of the same day and once again set out for the mountains, this time in order to visit some caves of rock salt mined for export. The plant was of fairly recent date, but on the way we were able to observe a whole encampment of Kirgiz engaged in winning cooking salt from a stream by a very ancient and primitive method. We were travelling through some pretty desolate country with hardly any grass and only scanty signs of vegetation. On our way up, our straining horses drawing us over rough boulders and stones, we caught sight of a great throng of people encamped by a stream and surrounded by their herds of horses and goats. A tall column of smoke rose from the midst of the site and it was some time before we realized what all these people were doing. About 500 or 1,000 Kirgiz were gathered together on a slope on the banks of a stream that wound a tortuous way downhill. I was given some of the water to taste, and one sip was enough to show how very salty it was. Several hundred small clay cooking stoves had been set up along the course of the stream. On these, flat copper cauldrons about two and a half feet in diameter and four inches deep, filled with water from the stream, were boiling, tended by the women of the tribe, both old and young. Pails filled with water were set beside each woman, who was responsible for three stoves and whose business it was to ladle water into the cauldrons, where it evaporated leaving a deposit of clear white salt at the bottom. Saturation point between the cauldrons was reached in stages, and was so timed that the liquid in one of the containers was usually the consistency of a thick brew. While the women were engaged day and night in raking the fires, their men folk kept them supplied with fuel. This was brought down from great distances in the mountains by strings of pack horses and yaks led by a rider on horseback whose own mount was also laden. Young women and children a little farther away were busy breaking up the salt, which was then packed into sacks and dispatched for sale to the towns and bazaars. The Governor told me that the administration of the State forests had repeatedly complained to him about the wastage of timber involved, yet the livelihood of so many families depended on the trade in salt that he could not bring himself to put an end to the practice. Besides, he thought the archaic procedure followed by the nomads was bound to die out in competition with the modern methods being introduced. Return to the Asia page Last Updated on September 23, 2001 by Sylvia

Salt

From John Bell, A Journey from St Petersburg to Pekin, 1719-22:
Solikamsky is famous for having many salt-pits in its neighbourhood, the property of my worthy friend Baron Stroganof, by virtue of a grant from his majesty. The Baron has brought these works to such perfection, that he is able to serve all Russia with salt; and could besides furnish a considerable quantity for exportation, were there any demand. The salt is of a brownish colour, and very good of the kind.
The common method of procuring this salt is as follows: They dig Pits in the earth till they come to the salt-rock, which seems to ly in these parts at a certain distance from the surface, as coals do in other places of the world. When the pit is finished, it is naturally, and of course, filled with water; which standing for a convenient time, till it is sufficiently impregnated with the salt, is then drawn out with pumps and other engines, and put into large iron caldrons, where it is boiled to a proper consistence; when, the water being evaporated, the salt is left upon the bottom.
I was informed of another curious and extraordinary process, by which they draw salt-water from a fresh-water river, which I cannot omit taking notice of. In the rivers near this place there is a mixture of salt-water arising from the springs, which either have their source in the salt-rocks, or run through them: it is the business of the inhabitants to discover the places where these springs empty themselves into the rivers, which they do by diving, or some other manner; having done this, they make a large frame of strong thick balks or beams joined very close, about fifteen or twenty feet square, and of depth enough to reach the bottom of the river, while part of it remains above the surface; when the ice is very strong they sink this machine into the river, over the place where the salt spring issues, and drive strong piles of wood all around, to hinder its being forced from this position by the current, or by floating ice in the end of winter. During the winter they draw out all the water, mud and sand, contained within the machine, and sink it still deeper until it hath penetrated the bottom of the channel of the river, and prevented all further communication between it and the salt spring: the frame is now filled only with the salt-water, issuing from the spring, from whence it is drawn, and the salt extracted as formerly described.
However tedious and expensive this process may seem, these people perform it with great readiness and ease; and, what is still more extraordinary, without regular instruction in any art subservient to that purpose, but by the mere force of natural genius. The Baron has a great number of hands constantly employed in this service. And the woods for fewel are inexhaustible.
When the salt is made, it is laid up in granaries, till the season of transporting it to Mosco, St Petersburg and other places: the barques, for this purpose, called by the Russians Lodia, are of a construction somewhat uncommon. I have seen some of them longer and broader than any first rate man of war in England, and not one iron-nail in the whole fabrick. All of them are flat-bottomed, having one tall tree for a mast, and a sail of light canvass in proportion. To manage this mighty machine, six or eight hundred men are necessary; the rudder is nearly as long as the barque; and so unwieldy, that sometimes it requires forty or fifty men to steer it. They load these ships very deep, and let them float down the Kama into the Volga; where, if the wind is not favourable, they are obliged to draw them, against the stream, to the place of their destination.

From Count Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 1908-1909:
We left Chimion in the evening of the same day and once again set out for the mountains, this time in order to visit some caves of rock salt mined for export. The plant was of fairly recent date, but on the way we were able to observe a whole encampment of Kirgiz engaged in winning cooking salt from a stream by a very ancient and primitive method. We were travelling through some pretty desolate country with hardly any grass and only scanty signs of vegetation. On our way up, our straining horses drawing us over rough boulders and stones, we caught sight of a great throng of people encamped by a stream and surrounded by their herds of horses and goats. A tall column of smoke rose from the midst of the site and it was some time before we realized what all these people were doing. About 500 or 1,000 Kirgiz were gathered together on a slope on the banks of a stream that wound a tortuous way downhill. I was given some of the water to taste, and one sip was enough to show how very salty it was. Several hundred small clay cooking stoves had been set up along the course of the stream. On these, flat copper cauldrons about two and a half feet in diameter and four inches deep, filled with water from the stream, were boiling, tended by the women of the tribe, both old and young. Pails filled with water were set beside each woman, who was responsible for three stoves and whose business it was to ladle water into the cauldrons, where it evaporated leaving a deposit of clear white salt at the bottom. Saturation point between the cauldrons was reached in stages, and was so timed that the liquid in one of the containers was usually the consistency of a thick brew. While the women were engaged day and night in raking the fires, their men folk kept them supplied with fuel. This was brought down from great distances in the mountains by strings of pack horses and yaks led by a rider on horseback whose own mount was also laden. Young women and children a little farther away were busy breaking up the salt, which was then packed into sacks and dispatched for sale to the towns and bazaars. The Governor told me that the administration of the State forests had repeatedly complained to him about the wastage of timber involved, yet the livelihood of so many families depended on the trade in salt that he could not bring himself to put an end to the practice. Besides, he thought the archaic procedure followed by the nomads was bound to die out in competition with the modern methods being introduced.

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Last Updated on September 23, 2001 by Sylvia