178 A SAIL UPON THE ALBERT LAKE. — thorny shrubs, and between these were little clumps of an aloe, with leaves striped with white. No labour can be performed in the immediate vicinity of the springs, owing to the overheated soil and want of space. We turned our faces towards the lake, and followed the curiously winding ravine to its outlet.

As we passed along we could easily imagine ourselves in the shaft of a gold-mine; and, in point of fact, the salt is gold to all our tribes. ‘The floor of the ravine had been levelled and cleared of all stones. The hot water was conducted in all directions in small troughs, set in and ingeniously supported on stones. Lumps of riddled earth lay heaped up ready for being operated upon. ‘T'he several work-places were separated from one another by rows of stones. Women and children were busy everywhere, either scratching up the saline soil, or else filling the sieve-like apparatus. The strangest thing about the scene was, perhaps, the walls of saline earth, piled up to the height of six or seven feet, and having rows of filtering vessels at their base; these walls, when seen from a distance, look like the ruins of a village.

The method of preparing the salt is quite simple. The earth from which the salt is to be extracted is placed in the evening under the end of a trough, whence a thin stream of water trickles over it all night long. In the morning it is put to dry for some hours; after this, the women, with crescent-shaped pieces of iron, scratch off its superficial layers, and put them into other small troughs, out of which they riddle it again into small heaps. ‘The next day a certain quantity of this earth is mixed with water, and then conveyed to the filtering apparatus. This consists of simple clay vessels, having holes in the bottom covered with a layer of fine hay; the vessels themselves stand upon three stones, and have beneath them smaller clay vessels, into which the liquid drops. This apparatus stands in rows, at the base of those mud walls to which I have already referred. When the filtration is finished, if the manufacturer is not pressed for time, he allows the liquor to evaporate in the open air; it then leaves behind it a pure white salt. If, however, time cannot be given for this process of evaporation, it is accomplished by means of