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In the covered house, No. 3., there are
twenty-four pumps, twelve on each side, to
distribute the water more equally over the
whole. This system of pumps is worked
joined bars of wood, which move backwards
and forwards, and are connected by
crank wheels with each piston, to raise and
depress it. As I have before mentioned,
they take care to evaporate on the windward
side of the building. When I was
on the top of No. 3., though the air was
veiy warm, I felt an intense degree of
cold, the consequence of speedy evaporation.
In the Maison de Cordes, it is found
that the evaporation goes on more speedily
in windy weather than in the Maisons
d’Epines, as might be expected from the
more ready access of air to the surface of
the water. The cords are double, passing
over horizontal rods of wood at the top
and the bottom, to keep them firm in their
positions, and at regular distances from
each other. I did not see the cords without
their envelope of selenite; but I was
informed that they were not thicker than
the finger. With the incrustations they
were become as thick as the wrist.
Near the salt-springs there are the remains
of a large reservoir, into which the
water was formerly made to fall from a
considerable height by a machine; but this
mode of evaporation was only found to
answer in very hot weather, and the process
is given up.
The saline water is received into reservoirs
from the springs, where it remains
some time before it passes to the Maisons
d’Epines, and here it deposits a considerable
quantity, or nearly all of its ferruginous
matter: the canal along which it runs to
the reservoirs is also lined with a red
ocherous incrustation.
The total length of the Maisons d’Epines
is as under:
Yards, English.
Nos. I.and2. together YOO
3........................... 370
4........................... 70
Total, 1140, or nearly two-thirds
of a mile.
The fuel used at the pans for the last process
is partly wood, and partly anthracite
from the neighbouring mountains. The anthracite
answers remarkably well when once
ignited, as it preserves for a long time a
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