232 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



THE GEOGRAPHIC VALUE OF THE GALLATIN 

 COUNTY SALINE. 



Miss Deette Rolfe, University of Illinois 



The most important geographic factors are not neces- 

 sarily the largest nor the best known. Neither are they 

 always the ones which have been operative over the longest 

 periods of time. It is the character of man's response and 

 extent to which it affects the course of his development 

 that determine their value. 



Man responds most readily and most unmistakably to 

 those factors which supply his actual daily needs. If, in 

 addition, he derives from those factors, either the incen- 

 tive or the means for developing new lines of activity or of 

 thought, their influence may become far-reaching in its 

 effect. An apparently insignificant factor may thus be of 

 large geographic value. 



Such is the case with the Gallatin County or Wabash 

 Saline. Situated in the midst of a swampy area, inac- 

 cessible through considerable portions of the year, and to- 

 day all but unknown to many of the residents of that part 

 of the state, it, nevertheless, was one of the most potent 

 factors in the early development of southern Illinois. 



Its first value lay in the fact that it supplied a vital need. 

 In the case of civilized man, the need for salt is so im- 

 perative that his use for the substance is regarded as one 

 index of his position in the cultural scale. This is be- 

 cause his food — largely vegetable in character and rich in 

 potassium salts — so tends to reduce the salt content of his 

 blood, that in order to maintain its normal amount, the 

 addition of free salt is necessary. Meat — especially raw or 

 half-cooked meat — does not make the same demand upon 

 the salt content as do vegetables, and for that reason, 

 savages living on an almost exclusively flesh diet do not 

 need salt nor care for it. 



Because salt supplies a direct need, settlement has every- 

 where followed closely upon the discovery of salt sources. 

 At a time when transportation facilities were poor, when 

 there were no railroads or steamboats, and when the in- 



