564 SALT AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL USES. 



Turkestan, who live upon milk and meat in their salt steppes, do not 

 use salt at all. The Bedouins of Arabia, according- to AVredo, find the 

 use of salt ridiculous, and the Numidians, whom Sallust describes as 

 disdaining the use of salt, fed, according to his testimony, upon milk 

 and meat — lacte et came fei'lna. 



Africa furnishes still other examples quite as demonstrative. Tlie 

 Scotchman, Miuigo Park, who a century ago explored the region now 

 called the great bend of the Niger, was struck with the eagerness for 

 salt shown b}^ the negro agricultural popidations. This was brought 

 to them with difficulty and sold at a very high price b}" caravans that 

 obtained it from Mauritania, from the sebkha of Ijil, halfway between 

 Senegal and Morocco, or from the deposits of Taudcni north of Tim- 

 buktu. ""In the interior countries," he says, "the greatest of all 

 luxuries is salt. It woidd appear strange to a European to see a child 

 suck a piece of rock-salt as if it were sugar. This, however, I have 

 frequently seen, although, in the inland parts, the poorer class of 

 inhabitants are so very rarely indulged with this precious article, that 

 to say a man cats salt with his victuals, is the same as sajnng, he is a 

 rich man. I have myself suffered great inconvenience from the scarcity 

 of this article. The long use of vegetable food creates so painful a 

 longing for salt, that no words can sufficiently describe it." This is an 

 important statement. We may compare it with an observation of an 

 opposite character also recorded by Bunge, which completes and serves 

 to confirm it. It relates to the astronomer, L. Schwarz, who, after 

 living some three months with the Tunguses of Siberia on an exclusive 

 diet of reindeer meat and game, lost the desire and the habit of adding 

 salt to his food. 



In America similar observations have been made. At the time of 

 its discovery the greater number of the tribes of North America lived 

 ))y the chase and by fishing. They used no salt, although it was very 

 common in their prairies. A small number only were at that time 

 sedentary and agricultural. These were fond of salt and undertook 

 frequc^iit Avars for the possession of saline springs. Farther south, in 

 Mexico, a sedentary people of more cultured character used salt regu- 

 larly, while in the Pampas, covered with salt lakes and efflorescences, 

 the Gauchos scorned a vegetable diet and the salt which seasoned it as 

 food fit only for their beasts. 



The examination of what has occurred in the people of the Indian 

 archipelago and Australia supports anew the law of Bunge. Every- 

 where it is the populations devoted to agriculture that use salt. Every- 

 where, also, peoples addicted to the chase, to fishing, or to a pastoral 

 life either disdain it or refuse to use it. Some European explorers 

 who have, like Schwarz, adopted an animal diet have become accus- 

 tomed to do without salt, while others, like Mungo Park, reduced to 

 vegetable food only, have endured an almost painful hunger for this 

 sul)stance. 



