Dr. Traill on the Salt Mines of Car dona, 407 



4epth. This is partly to be ascribed to the water being saturated 

 with salt J but, during the rainy season^ the stream is much aug- 

 mented, and thus cannot be supposed so highly charged with saline 

 matter. Notwithstanding this, neither the solvent nor mechanical 

 effects of the spring seem to have much effect on the fossil salt of 

 Cardona. The waters of this spring flow into the Cardonero, 

 leaving in the valley a thick scaly crust of salt, resembling the ice 

 formed around our brooks in similar situations. During the rainy 

 reason, it is asserted that the stream carries down such quantities 

 of salt into the Cardonero as to kill the fish in that river. This 

 assertion rests upon the authority of Bowles, an able naturalist j 

 but he undoubtedly was led into error when he asserted, that the 

 waters of the Cardonero at some leagues below the mines yield no 

 trace of salt : from which he inferred, that salt may, by motion^ be 

 converted into earthy matter. At Manresa, which is about twenty 

 miles below t^Iardona, I tested the water of the Cardonero by nitrate 

 of silver, which indicated the presence of an unusually large portion 

 of muriate of soda. The taste of the brine spring at Cardona is 

 intensely saline \ and the hand immersed in it, on being exposed to 

 the air, is instantly covered with a film of salt. The salt rock near 

 its source is most elegantly veined with delicate waved delineations 

 of an ochre yellow colour. 



The clay which covers the bed of salt at Cardona and forms the 

 sides of the valley, exactly resembles the clay found in the salt 

 district of Cheshire, having v;hen dfy £ome resemblance to shale 

 but becoming plastic when moistened. It is remarkably pure, and 

 free froai intermixture except of salt, , large masses of which arc 

 occasionally imbedded in it. 



