94 Visit to the Salt Works of Zipaquera. 
quartillos, (9 cents.) The plan was tried, and the stores were soon 
_ found filled with a superabundance of earthen ware. 
The gentlemen who have charge of the salt works are aware of 
the very rude manner of conducting the processes, but the want of 
artizans, the influence of ancient customs, and deficiency of scien- 
tific and other practical information, induce them to adhere to the 
old plan. Some of those however who have an interest in their 
works, propose to establish, at some short distance, a forge and foun- 
dery, ultimately to supply iron pots, with contrivances to allow the 
escape of the loaves of salt after the processes of calcination. 
Although the impost of the government is so high upon the man- 
ufacture of salt at the springs, that procured by evaporation on the 
sea coast is not subject to any duty ; and foreign salt has been per- 
mitted to enter almost free, until the last session of the congress at 
Bogota, when a duty of eight rials (one dollar) for every hundred 
Ibs. was imposed. 
The state of the roads in New Granada, inaccessible for the most 
part to wheel carriages ; with its rapid rivers, navigated almost solely 
by canoes, makes transportation so expensive, that with the high 
price created by the government monopoly, salt is much economized. 
Strangers find themselves obliged to carry a lump of salt with their 
baggage, to add to the very scanty seasoning of it usual in the 
cooking. A salt cellar is by no means thought an indispensable part 
of the table equipage, and in many instances it will be in vain called 
for. A North American vessel was found at Buenaventura, on the 
Pacific, with salt brought from the Sandwich Islands: this, inclosed 
in hides, was conveyed up very rapid rivers into the interior, al- 
though by nature so extensively and amply supplied with it. Some 
of the medical gentlemen in the country are inclined to believe that 
the deficient use of salt has a tendency to promote the goitre, a dis- 
ease which prevails very extensively in some districts, and for which 
iodine internally, and frictions with sea water and Aceyté de Sal,* 
* Dr. Cheyne, of Bogota, a highly esteemed English ph ysician, — » me the fol- 
Jowing analysis of the Aceyté de Sal, compared with that of sea w 
nyt ‘Sa Water, 
Wat - 0.7064 - - - 0.9691 
Hydrochlorate of ntdes 0.1527 “ 7 a 0.0218 
magnesia, 0.0450 - - - 0.0049 
= " “ lime, 0.0930 : ; 0 
REE and 5 oe “potash, - 0.0002 wi - pi . traces, 
2 as iron, + 0.0027 - . “ 
Hydriodate of iron, - traces, ‘ 3 % — 
Sulphate of so : : : 0.0034 
