Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — Miles and Miles of Salt. [ARTICLE]

Miles and Miles of Salt.

One of the natural curiosities of Asia is the Great Salt Desert of Persia, which covers a largo territory about seventy miles south of Teheran. C. E. Biddulph, who recently visited this place, says that Darya-l-Namak is an extensive tract of ground, sloping on all sides toward the center, covered with an incrustation of solid salt several feet thick in most places, while in some parts it is of unknown depth. According to Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine, it must have taken many centuries to form. As he saw it from the mountain top it stretched away for many miles, appearing like a vast frozen lake. It extended as far as the eye could reach toward the south and west and glistened in the sun like a sheet of glass.His party finally approached the margin of the salt plain and decided to cross it. They found swampy ground for a mile or so and then entered upon the sheet of salt itself. Near the edge the incrustation was thin and the salt she<s was soft, sloppy and mixed with earth. At a distance of three or four miles from the edge the salt looked like solid ice as it is seen on any pond in northern latitudes during the "winter. The surface was not quite level but resembled that of ice which had partially thawed and then frozen again after a slight fall of snow. Of the solidity of this incrustation there could be no doubt, for camels, horses and mules were traveling over it without a vibration of any kind being perceptible. After marching for about eight miles upon this unusual surface the party halted to examine its composition. They tried, by means of a hammer and an iron tent peg, to break off a block of salt to carry away as a specimen. The salt, however, was so very hard that they could make no impression up it. They managed at last in another place, to chip off a lot of fragments which were of the purest white. In two or three days had absorbed so much moisture that they became soft and slately blue in cdlor.

Thebe are few more nigged figures among the Scotch scholars of the present generation than is Prof. Blackle, of Edinburgh. Though 83, he has never worn a pair of spectacles, and for thirty years he had no need of medical advice. He attributes the vitality of his old age to his custom of living by an unvarying system, and it is noteworthy that Oliver Wendell Holmes, who is of about the same age and equally well preserved, told an some time ago that his own good health was due to his habit of living strictly by rule, even to the temperature of his bath. It is interesting to know that Prof. Blackie does not go to bed until the clock strikes 12. He rises at 7:30, and always after his midday meal he takes a nap. Eliza Spabbow, of Martha’s Vineyard, has given a large tract of land to the Marine Hospital.