THE SYMBOLISM OF SALT. 245 



that this practice is a survival from the days when the Zunis were 

 inhabitants of the cliff dwellings. By careful computation it has 

 been ascertained that the amount of provisions invariably carried 

 would be the proper allowance for the time consumed in a journey 

 from- the cliff dwellings to the place where the salt is obtained and 

 back again. 



From the careful preservation of all its features this salt-getting 

 expedition would appear to have been at one time a ceremonial of 

 religious importance. In the old cliff dwellings are found peculiar 

 little bags containing salt; and at the present time a certain amount 

 of the mineral, when brought to the villages, is set aside as sacred 

 and preserved in little bags almost identical with those found in the 

 ancient dwellings. 



Where men live on milk and raw or roasted flesh, sodium chloride 

 is an unnecessary addition. Thus the Numidian nomads in the 

 past did not, and the Bedouins of Hadramant of the present do 

 not, eat salt with their food. On the other hand, a cereal, vegeta- 

 ble, and boiled meat diet calls for salt. Livingstone's South Africa 

 contains a very interesting passage treating this subject. The au- 

 thor says, speaking of the Bakwains : " When the poor who had no 

 salt were forced to live on an exclusively vegetable diet they were 

 troubled with indigestion. The native doctors, aware of the cause 

 of the malady, usually prescribed some of that ingredient with their 

 medicines. The doctors themselves had none, so the poor resorted 

 to us for aid. We took the hint, and henceforth cured the disease 

 by giving a teaspoonful of salt, minus the other remedies. Meat or 

 milk had the same effect, though not so rapidly as salt. When I 

 was myself deprived of salt for four months at two distinct periods, 

 I felt no desire for the condiment, but was plagued by a longing for 

 meat and milk. This continued as long as I was confined to ex- 

 clusively vegetable diet, and when I procured a meal of flesh, though 

 boiled in fresh rain water, it tasted pleasantly salt. . Milk or meat 

 or salt, obtained in however small quantities, removed entirely the 

 excessive longing and dreaming about -roasted ribs of fat oxen and 

 bowls of cool, thick milk." 



The consumption of salt has become almost a necessity to most 

 peoples through long-continued habit; but, where tribes have been 

 cut off from the use of it for a lengthened period, the taste for the 

 mineral has almost or entirely died out. For instance, during the 

 reign of Montezuma I, and from that time to the conquest, the 

 Tlascaltec territory was completely surrounded by the Aztecs. Thus 

 communication with the coast was prevented, and this people were 

 compelled to do without salt among other luxuries. It became so 

 rare that, though the nobles smuggled in a little for their own use, 



