Agricola, Georgius - De re metallica

1always provides a new and copious supply, always boiling hot, it condenses
the thickened water poured into the pans into salt; this is at once taken
out with shovels, and then the work begins all over again. If the salty water
contains other juices, as is usually the case with hot springs, no salt should
be made from them.

Others boil salt water, and especially sea-water, in large iron pots;
this salt is blackish, for in most cases they burn straw under them. Some
people boil in these pots the brine in which fish is pickled. The salt which
they make tastes and smells of fish.

285[Figure 285]

A—TRENCH. B—VAT INTO WHICH THE SALT WATER FLOWS. C—LADLE. D—SMALL
BUCKET WITH POLE FASTENED INTO IT.

Those who make salt by pouring brine over firewood, lay the wood in
trenches which are twelve feet long, seven feet wide, and two and one half
feet deep, so that the water poured in should not flow out. These trenches
are constructed of rock-salt wherever it is to be had, in order that they should
not soak up the water, and so that the earth should not fall in on the front,
back and sides. As the charcoal is turned into salt at the same time as the

Table of figures

Text layer

Text normalization

Search