230 SOILS OF INDIA. 



on a red ferruginous soil ; when purest it is collected by the 

 •washermen, and used by them instead of soap ; hence it is 

 known by the name of washerman's earth. Soda also oc- 

 curs in efflorescences on the surface of cotton ground ; but 

 there it is mixed with a great proportion of common salt, 

 which fonns the principal object of a manufactory carried 

 on by the people called tank-diggers by Europeans, and 

 salt-people by the natives. Saltworks of this kind are of 

 frequent occurrence in the Mysore country, which renders 

 importation of salt from the coast very trifling. 



6. Salt Soil or Ground. — In many parts of India the soil 

 is richly impregnated with common salt, thus forming a salt 

 soil or ground, as it is sometimes termed. Thus, near to 

 Vencataghery, common salt appears to be generally diffused 

 over and through a black poor soil, where it is collected and 

 used for culinaiy purposes. Between Baydamungulum and 

 Tayculum in the Mysore, Buchanan had an opportunity of 

 examining one of the places where salt is made. The sit- 

 uation was low and moist; the soil a black mould, consist- 

 ing of a mixture of sand and clay, that from its appe.-irance 

 would have been reckoned good ; but the impregnation of 

 salt renders it for cultivation greatly inferior to soils appa- 

 rently of a worse quality and free from salt. The natives 

 allege, that if they walk much on this saline earth their bare 

 feet become blistered. In the dry season the surface of the 

 earth is scraped off and collected in heaps. In front of 

 these heaps the native salt-makers construct a semicircle of 

 small round cisterns, each about three feet in diameter and 

 a foot deep, with sides and floors of dry mud. Towards the 

 heaps of saline earth there is in the floor of each a small 

 aperture, with a wooden spout to convey the brine into an 

 earthen pot placed in a cavity below. The floors of the cis- 

 terns are covered with straw, and the saline earth is put in 

 till it rises nearly to the level of the tops of the walls. On 

 the surface of the saline earth water is then poured, which 

 in filtering through into the pots carries with it all the salt. 

 The inert earth, being thrown out behind the cisterns, is re- 

 placed with new earth for saturating more water. In the 

 mean time the brine is emptied into a cavity cut in a rock, 

 and is evaporated entirely by the sun. The natives say that 

 the salt is sufficiently wholesome. The grain is large and 

 consists of well-formed cubes ; but the salt is miied with 



