184 The Salt Industry in Cheshire. 
nearly fell over loose piles of salt that I could not see. The 
miners, however, get quite accustomed to the darkness, and say 
they can see perfectly well. 
The mine is generally from 18 to 30 feet high. The salt is 
got off either by pickaxes or else by blasting, chiefly the latter, one 
blast usually dislodging from one to three tons, though sometimes 
no less than fifteen tons. The noise of a blast is something 
tremendous, and the vibration so great that it seems as if the 
whole mine were going to fall in. The echoes roll round like 
thunder. 
The difficulty of ventilation, about which we hear so much in 
the case of coal mines, does not occur here, from there being no 
gases generated by the salt, and also from the mine being one 
large chamber ; for the rock salt lies in a continuous bed, and 
does not, so far as the miners have tried it, run in narrow veins. 
The only passage for air is down the shafts, and yet the mine 
seems perfectly fresh. One shaft has an up draught and the other 
a down draught, each always keeping the same direction. No 
brine ever comes into these lower mines, as it is only running over 
the upper salt stratum. The temperature never alters summer 
or winter, always keeping about 52° F. The salt is carried to the 
shaft by trucks that run on lines laid along the floor. It is then 
wound up the shaft in a bucket, and if it is to be ground on the 
premises the bucket is tilted over into a slanting trough, down 
which it shoots the salt into a large machine very much like a 
coffee mill. 
What is not ground is sent away in lumps, to the lighters, 
which carry it down the Weaver and Mersey to Liverpool, whence 
it is shipped for Denmark, Holland, and other countries where 
foreign white salt is prohibited, or under too heavy duty. In these 
places it is made into brine, and white salt got from that. The 
lumps are also used for cattle to lick and for salting hides. The 
chief use of rock salt now, besides the alkali manufacture, is in the 
great process started fifteen years ago of reducing copper ore, 
which has made copper and brass articles so much cheaper and 
more plentiful than formerly. 
As salt is such an indispensable article, it is comforting to 
know that there is practically no danger connected with procuring 
it. Accidents very seldom occur, and when they do, they nearly 
always arise from carelessness on the part of the workmen. If a 
man drops a lighted match into gunpowder or anything else of 
that kind, the consequences are naturally serious. Occasionally a 
man falls into a pan of scalding-hot brine ; but this happens either 
from extreme carelessness or else from his not being quite sober. 
While I was looking at the pans a man came up to say that the day 
before another man had fallen in in rather a curious manner. He 
