Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

WITH THE SALT WORKERS IN A CHESHIRE MINE. 335 MAKING SALT SQUARES. toecap of a miner’s boot sticking into your back, for standing on the top of the bucket, and grasping the chain that holds your life in its links, is a miner travelling astride. You seem to be dropping through chaos ; but you are really descending the shaft, which is iron cylindered to prevent water from enter- ing the mine. A glimmer of light, casting weird shadows about you, heralds your safe arrival at the bottom, 300 feet below the surface daylight. Here you scramble out of the tub into a cavernous roadway intersected with iron rails that lead into the depths of the mine. The place is floored, walled, and roofed with rock salt, and your underground guide—a perfect type of deputy with burly frame and the quality of humour on his face —gives you a candle in a wooden slot, and your adventure begins with a prosaic but interesting peep at the stables. Here, near the bottom of the shaft, the ponies give evidence of the healthy quality of salt. They have been down the mine for years, and are fat and sleek, with coats as glossy and smooth as velvet. And they are ever licking the rock salt at the manger head, demonstrating more conclusively than the wisdom of savant that salt is not only bene- ficial to the body, but good for the com- plexion. The main road to the workings is wide and lofty, and supported by great square pillars of rock salt. There is not a drop of moisture anywhere. The roadway is dusty with powdered marl. The masses of rock salt that heap and bulge here and there are dry and gleaming, and remind one of a spa cave in the Peak of Derbyshire. In the working area, which you reach by a steep path, the sight is impressive. The cavern hereabouts is very spacious ; your light flashes on the roof and walls and casts grim shadows into the worked-out gulfs. Near the shaft you have been shown a seam in which amber rock salt, exceedingly rare, was found. Now you note bits of pure white rock salt, almost as clear as crystal. In the lowering roof above you all is sparkle and glitter. 1 here are streaks and splashes of brown, red, chrome, and terra-cotta-like strata, all containing rock salt. Here the rock is dark with marl ; there black with blasting ; but everywhere it is a geological curiosity. The mine, which is forty acres in extent, has a quarter of a mile of “ face ” or working. Along it groups of men—hewers, drillers, and shot firers—are busy at their toil. The only invention probably that has facilitated salt mining since the discovery of rock salt in the