Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/675

Rh manufactured in a very simple manner by the primitive method of the solar evaporation of sea-water. The salt-factory consists of a large terrace, above which is another terrace of only one sixth the superficial area of the lower one, and of two salt-water cisterns, one at a short distance from the terraces, and the other between them. The terraces having been covered with a bed of gravel, the larger or lower one is filled with water, which is admitted at high tide through a sluice-gate in the dike. After giving a sufficient time for the soil of the terrace to absorb the water, the gravel, on which a considerable quantity of salt has accumulated, is raked up. At a little above the level of one of the cisterns is fixed a filter made of bamboo rods. On this is piled the salted gravel which has been collected from the lower terrace, and through the whole is run a stream of sea-water from the larger cistern. The water, having absorbed the salt from the gravel over the filter, is then led into the smaller cistern—the one between the terraces—and from this is taken and spread over the second terrace, where the solar heat soon removes it by evaporation from the dissolved salt. The salt is then ready for use without any further preparation. Two men are sufficient to work a salt-bed that will furnish an average of seven hundred and twenty kilogrammes of salt every two days—a return that would be extremely profitable were it not for the taxes. But the manufacture of salt is a government monopoly, and whoever goes into the business has to pay the state seven tenths of all that he produces; so that the road to wealth, for the individual, is not, after all, through a salt-marsh.

Busy as he is at his busy time, the Chinese fisherman's life is a hand-to-mouth existence, and it is a great strain upon him to maintain himself through his dull season. Men of this craft have then to resort to other side-trades to eke out their living. Some of them gather up shells on the beach and burn them into lime; some split off the nacreous parts from large muscle-shells and carve them into square semitransparent panes, which serve as substitutes for window-glass; and others, going to the oyster-beds, skillfully pry open the shells so as not to disturb the inhabitants, and slip into them pieces of wood carved into fanciful shapes, which will in time become thinly covered with nacre and be sold for mother-of-pearl ornaments.

In view of the precarious condition of their existence, the fishermen have formed themselves into societies for common protection against the rapacity of the mandarins and to give assistance to such as may be in need. The society at Hai-Meun constitutes a strong corporation, and possesses a large building, where its business meetings are regularly held and theatrical representations are given; a hall for the public weighing of such fish as are sold by weight; and a temple where sacrifices are made before going to sea, with a space in front of it in which the new nets are spread for the performance of the ceremonies of consecration.