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After great droughts, crystallized and very pure muriate of soda, in masses of three or four cubic feet, is still drawn from time to time from the bottom of the lagoon.
Upon concentrating the solutions, cubic crystals will be obtained, having a taste similar to common salt. They consist of potassium and chloride, and when dissolved in water they may be regarded as muriate of potassa. Chloride of Lime. The liquid clarifies by standing; may be regarded as a solution of chloride of lime, and must be protected from the air and light.
In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; as salt, for example, or oil; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt.
It is remarkable enough, that this stratum of clay, as well as the banks of pure sal-gem and the salzthon in Europe, scarcely ever contains shells, while the rocks adjacent exhibit them in great abundance. Although the muriate of soda is not found visible to the eye in the clay of Araya, we cannot doubt of its existence.
The vast gulf of Cariaco has been caused by an irruption of the sea; and no doubt can be entertained but that the waters once covered, on the southern bank, the whole tract of land impregnated with muriate of soda, through which flows the Manzanares.
The process used to be this. The ore which I shewed you just now was taken, and digested in nitro-muriatic acid of a certain strength, and partly converted into a solution, with the leaving behind of certain bodies that I have upon the table. The platinum being dissolved with care in acids, to the solution the muriate of ammonia was added, as I am about to add it here.
The evaporation is extremely strong, and favoured by the constant motion of the air; so that the salt is collected in eighteen or twenty days after the pits are filled. Though the muriate of soda is manufactured with less care in the peninsula of Araya than at the salt-works of Europe, it is nevertheless purer, and contains less of earthy muriates and sulphates.
The presence of carbonate of lime in a rock may be ascertained by applying to the surface a small drop of diluted sulphuric, nitric, or muriatic acid, or strong vinegar; for the lime, having a greater chemical affinity for any one of these acids than for the carbonic, unites immediately with them to form new compounds, thereby becoming a sulphate, nitrate or muriate of lime.
We know not whether this purity may be attributed to that portion of the salt which is furnished by the sea; for though it is extremely probable, that the quantity of salt dissolved in the waters of the ocean is nearly the same under every zone, it is not less uncertain whether the proportion between the muriate of soda, the muriate and sulphate of magnesia, and the sulphate and carbonate of lime, be equally invariable.
There is, however, a great difficulty on this view, for the resultant salts should be carbonate of soda and muriate of lime; the latter is present, but not the carbonate of soda.
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