The great difficulty in the question of the fisheries is to know whether the French have the exclusive right to fish on that part of the Newfoundland coast assigned to them by the treaties.
As my position requires me to be strictly impartial, I will now cite the articles upon which is based the opposition to the claims of France by the British Colonial Institute.
Treaty of 1783. Art. 3.
Convention of 1818 between Great Britain and the United States.
I will not speak of the most ordinary uses of salt nor of the usefulness of this condiment, which is indispensable for the preservation of food. I will not deal at length with the industrial applications of salt which serves to make artificial soda, and prepare chlorine and sal ammoniac and to varnish certain kinds of earthen-ware. Neither will I plunge into the darkness of the past to show how salt was employed in religious worship. By the Jews and Pagans it was used in sacrifices to purify and consecrate the victim. The lustral water was salted, as is the holy water of our days, which proves, as Solomon said, that there is nothing new under the sun. But there is a subject of the highest importance for this very country, which I cannot pass by without devoting a few words to it; I refer to the use of salt in agriculture. Mixed with a certain proportion of soot, it improves lands under cultivation and increases the fertility of wild lands. It is an effectual remedy against rust and, when mixed with seeds, it preserves them against the ravages of insects. It promotes the vegetation of oily seeds and particularly flax, that flax which is used in making fine fabrics.
Salt also increases the amount of fodder in pasture lands and meadows; it improves the quality of hay, renders coarse forage more nutritious and damp food less injurious to cattle and horses. It preserves animals from disease, makes their flesh more palatable and increases the yield of milk in cows and goats. Moreover, salt, if used as a fertilizer, can change the climate. The inhabitants of Canada may, if they wish, raise the temperature of their shores and shorten their winters. They will not, in all probability have an Andalusian sky, for the effects of chloride of sodium can hardly go so far. But seriously speaking, the cold may be made less intense in the following way. Some soils absorb salt and become heated by it. But there are others which do not absorb it completely; the salt washed by the rains is carried to the waters of lakes and rivers and after a certain number of years when it accumulates in sufficient quantities, it prevents and delays the freezing of the waters. Now, it must be admitted that all these watery surfaces made solid by frost and which are scattered all over fair Canada's bosom are famous ice-houses which contribute to no slight degree to bring down the thermometer to 40° below zero.
Finally, it is a well known fact that salt exists in large quantities throughout the world, either in beds of greater or lesser thickness in the bowels of the earth (known as rock salt) or in solution in the waters of the sea, of certain lakes and springs. In Spain, Aragon and Catalonia have considerable deposits of rock-salt. Sea-water contains about 3 per cent of salt which is obtained by evaporating the water in extensive basins hollowed out on the sea-shore and known as salterns. As a rule they are composed: 1° of a vast reservoir placed in front of the saltern proper, deeper than them and communicating with the sea by a canal closed by a sluice. It is filled at high tide, and is intended to keep the water until the impurities it contains settle at the bottom and to feed the other basins, as the water they contain is evaporated; 2°. Of the salterns proper, situate behind the reservoir and divided into a multitude of compartments separated by small dykes, which are intended to increase the exposed surfaces so as to hasten evaporation and to receive the waters as they become more and more condensed. These compartments communicate with each other, but in such a manner that the water goes from one to the other, only after having passed through a long series of canals.
When the water begins to redden, it is a sign that the salt will soon crystallize; the water then becomes covered with a salt film which falls to the bottom. The salt is drawn up on the small dykes which separate the compartments and it is then drained oft. This process is repeated two or three times a week from the month of May to the month of October.
Salt means life to a great many men and a very large proportion of the whole amount used comes from my country.