from being at so great a distance from the sea, and the unavoidable consumption of
that article throughout the country, both in making their cheese, and giving it to their
cattle, which, strange as it may appear, they literally do, three times a week. These
springs, being now the property of the state, the government has neglected no means
of improving; and indeed so fortunate have they been, that the original expenses
incurred for that object were crowned with success j for they were soon after found to
yield upwards of 38,000 quintals, or hundred-weight, of salt per annum. The desire,
however, of ameliorating them still more, having tempted the senate, about the middle
of the present century, to adopt the plans of some foreign mineralogists, they were .
induced to dig deep and extensive pits, in order to augment, if possible, the volume of
salt water; but, instead of the prodigious advantages which had been expected, it was
soon perceived that they had been ill advised; for on the contrary, instead of gaining,
they were literally decreasing, and, in fact, they yielded scarcely more than half the
former quantity: so that, even during monsieur Haller's superintendence, the spring of
La Providence, accoimted one of the most abundant, yielded no more than nine hundred
and thirteen pounds of salt water per hour, or about eleven pounds and a half of
salt per hundred,—which diminution still continuing, the whole produce of the springs
is at present calculated to be but about two thousand five hundred pounds of salt per
day only, or nine thousand one hundred and twenty-five quintals per year.
Besides these springs, with their different pits and galleries dug in the interior of
the mountain, which will be further described, the buildings of graduation, or those
which serve for evaporation, including those for boiling the brine, and the magazines for
depositing the salt, all known by the appellation of salt-works, deserve every traveler's
attention: those for the evaporation I particularly recommend, as being both curious
in construction and mechanism. The salines at Aigle, although deemed to be kept in
better order, are certainly not so extensive as those at Bevieux; but the form or construction
of the building is that of an immense gallery, fifteen hundred feet long, fifty
wide, and forty-five high. The centre of this gallery is filled with small faggots, laid with
care on timber-frames joined together, not unlike a scaffold; upon these faggots the salt
water gradually falls, pure as it comes from the source or spring, by means of pumps, put
in motion by a wheel of thirty feet in diameter, which is turned by a current of salt
water. The saline water being thus, at different times, or repeatedly, made to fall on
the faggots through which it filters, it not only, in a great measure, insensibly gets rid,
'1' fiiLii,
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