356 



On Nitrate of Soda. 



in the same parched neig-hbourhood, yet did not reach Europe 

 till some years later. In 1820, however, as Mr. Bollaert in- 

 forms us, some nitrate was sent to England, but the duty being 

 too high, ims thrown overboard. Ten years afterwards, in 1830, 

 a cargo was sent to the United States, but found unsaleable 

 there ; a part of it was therefore forwarded to Liverpool, but re- 

 turned unsaleable from Liverpool also. Such is the risk of 

 dealing in a new article ; yet in the year following another cargo 

 sold in England for 35Z. per ton ; and up to 1850 239,860 tons 

 of the nitrate were exported from the port of Iquique alone, making 

 a return of towards jive millions sterling. The market-rate has 

 since settled down to 17/. or 16Z. per ton, but even at that figure 

 the price, owing to the excessive cost of production, must be greatly 

 too high. For, according to Mr. Darwin, the chief expense in 

 producing it is the transfer from the quarry to the sea-coast. 

 Now the distance as the crow flies is not more than 10 miles, 

 and, by the circuitous track (road there is none, even for this 

 large traffic), that traveller reached the works from the port, 

 though mounted upon a mule, in a single day. The nitrate also 

 is brought down on the backs of mules, and Mr. Darwin found 

 the desert interval strewed with the bones and dried skins of the 

 many beasts of burden which had perished on it from fatigue. 

 The only living animal was the vulture, which preys on the 

 carcases. Even with this barbarous mode of conveyance I cannot 

 understand how transport for one day's journey can alone justify so 

 high a price ; when 14 gallons of water, more than a hundredweight, 

 are carried in the same way to a neighbouring silver-mine, a 

 distance of 22 miles, for 45., a small part of I65. now charged on 

 the hundredweight of nitrate. But of course a carriage-road 

 would have been made years ago had not the country belonged to 

 a race whose inertness neither the civilization of Europe at home, 

 nor the enterprise of a new field in America, can overcome. It 

 is singularly unfortunate that the only three great deposits of 

 manure in the world should be in the keeping of Spaniards : for 

 the phosphate bed of Estremadura, described by Dr. Daubeny, 

 is almost as inaccessible as the Pampa of Tamarugal, while 

 guano, though lying on the sea-shore of Peru, is doubled in price 

 by monopoly of the government. 



But it appears to me that a further large reduction might be 

 made in the cost of nitrate when intended to be sold for manure. 

 All the nitrate now sent to England goes through the process of 

 purification, because it is chiefly used by chemical manufac- 

 turers, not by farmers. The process at the quarries, for they 

 cannot be called mines, is as follows :* — " The rough nitrate of 



* Mr. Bollaert, Journal of Geographical Society. 



