elt
confident that Nature had provided for their wants and cravings by
giving them everything necessary to their existence, and, among other
necessities, that one which we were now in search of ourselves--salt.
In other words, but that this was a salt spring, or there existed some
other such in the valley, these creatures would not have been found
within it. I took the opportunity to point out this theory to my boys,
as well as to show them--what I myself clearly recognised in it--the
hand of the Creator. It rendered them confident that, when we had
evaporated our water, we should get salt for our pains.

"`Papa,' inquired Frank, who was a great naturalist, `I should like to
know what makes this little rivulet run salt water.'

"`No doubt,' I replied, `the water you see gushing forth has just been
passing through vast beds or rock-salt, and has become impregnated with
it.'

"`Rock-salt! and is the salt we use found in rocks?'

"`Not all of it, though great quantities are. There are beds of
rock-salt found in many countries--in England, and the East Indies, in
Russia, and Hungary, and Spain; and it has also been discovered in vast
quantities in this very Desert we are now dwelling in. These beds of
rock-salt, when worked to supply salt, are called salt-mines. The most
celebrated are in Poland, near the city of Cracow. These have been
worked for seven hundred years; and there is enough left in them to
supply all the world for many centuries yet to come. These mines are
said to be very beautiful--lit up, as they are, by numerous lamps. The
rock has been excavated by the miners into all sorts of shapes. Houses,
chapels, columns, obelisks, and many other ornamental forms of
buildings, have been made; and these, when illuminated by lamps and
torches, appear as splendid and brilliant as the palaces of Aladdin.'

"`Oh! I should like so much to see them!' cried Harry, in a transport.

"`But, papa,' inquired Frank, who always sought after information on
such subjects, `I never saw any of this rock-salt. How is it that it
comes to us always crushed, or in great bricks, as if it had been baked?
Do they break it fine before it is sent to market from the mines?'

"`In some of these mines nothing more is required than to crush the
rock; in others, however, the rock is not pure salt, but mixed with
other substances, as oxide of iron and clay. In these cases it is first
dissolved in water, to separate it from such imp