SALT. 
431 
mentioned by several travellers. In Persia very 
extensive plains are said to be covered with a saline 
efflorescence, especially near Bender-Congo. In 
Arabia the plains are seldom without salt ; and in 
Africa this substance is so abundantly spread on the 
ground, that we may presume the dry and hot soil 
has some share in its formation. 
In many parts of the world we meet with lakes 
of salt-water, whose bottoms are encrusted with a 
layer of salt. Barrow, in particular, during his 
travels into the interior of Africa, notices these 
saline lakes. He met with them to the east of the 
Cape on the frontiers of the Caffre country, and 
has given us the following account of their situa- 
tion : “ On the evening of the seventeenth we en- 
camped on the verdant bank of a beautiful lake in 
the midst of a wood of frutescent plants. It was of 
an oval form, about three miles in circumference. 
On the western side was a shelving bank of green 
turf, and round the other parts of the bason the 
ground, rising more abruptly, and to a greater 
height, was covered thickly with the same kind of 
arboreous and succulent plants as had been observed 
to grow most commonly in the thickets of the ad- 
joining country. The water was perfectly clear, 
but salt as brine. It was one of those salt-water 
lakes which abound in Southern Africa, where they 
are called z out-pans by the colonists. The one in 
question, it seems, is the most famous in the colony, 
and is resorted to by the inhabitants from very 
distant parts of the country, for the purpose of pro- 
