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IN the United States, salt springs are very numerous. They sometimes flow naturally, but are generally formed by sinking wells in those places where salt is known to exist, as in marshes, salt licks, and other similar places. The country on the Arkansas river furnishes some salt; it differs however, from most other places in the United States, by existing in pools, and forming incrustations on the soil of plains and prairies. There is no salt obtained in Arkansas by boring, the usual mode of procuring it in other localities. There are numerous salt springs in Missouri; the working of many of them, however, has been suspended or relinquished, on account of the reduced price of salt. Large quantities of the article are still made at Boon’s Lick, and near St. Genevieve and Herculaneum.

Salt springs are worked at Sciota; the quantity yielded, however, is comparatively small. There are no salt-works on the Tennessee river; but on the Holston, one of its tributaries, are extensive salt springs, situated near Abingdon, Virginia, and known by the name of King’s and Preston’s salt-works. These springs yield a considerable quantity of salt. Preston’s works have been rendered less productive, by being diluted by a spring of fresh water flowing into the midst of the salt.

Salt springs are very numerous in Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia. Springs holding salt in solution are common in various parts of the bituminous coal region of Pennsylvania. They are generally weak near the surface, but deep springs, disclosed by boring, are often strong. One of these, which contains as much salt as the ordinary water of Salina, was discovered by boring, about twenty miles from Montrose, bordering on the state of New-York. The most considerable saline springs are on the banks of the Conemaugh and Kiskeminitas, about thirty miles east of Pittsburg. These rivers for many miles wind through rocky ravines, bordered by hills of three and four hundred feet in height, that rise with steep acclivities, presenting mural precipices of grey sand-stone, in places jutting over the road and torrent. Large quantities of salt are made at these springs.

In the town of Salina, in the state of New-York, about one hundred and thirty miles west of Albany, are situated the most extensive works in the United States for the manufacture of salt from natural brine. The indications of that substance along the margin of Onondaga Lake are supposed to have been similar to those found on the salt licks, so common in the interior of the country, and the knowledge of their existence was derived from the aborigines.

‘One of the earliest settlers in the county of Onondaga,’ says a writer in Silliman’s Journal, ‘has informed me, that to procure salt for his family, about forty years since, he, with an Indian guide in a canoe, descended a small river that discharges into the lake at its south-eastern termination, along the shore of which he passed, a short distance to the right, and, ascending a rivulet (now Mud Creek) a few rods, arrived at the spring or natural discharge of salt water, which was obtained by lowering to the bottom, then four or five feet beneath the surface of the fresh water of the lake, an iron vessel, which, filling instantly with the heavier fluid, was drawn up and the brine poured out. In this way, he got enough to make on the spot, by boiling, and without any separation of the earthy impurities that were held with the salt in solution, a small quantity of brownish colored and very impure salt. Since that time other springs have been discovered at various and almost opposite points on the shores of the lake, and many wells have been sunk to procure brine for the manufactories at the villages of Liverpool, Salina, Syracuse, and Geddesburg. The wells did not exceed eighteen feet in depth, and in the strength of the water which they respectively afforded there was great difference, which varied much with the seasons, with this remarkable circumstance, that it sometimes diminished fifteen to twenty per cent., and in some instances, one third, as the adjoining lands, on the advance of summer, became drained; and the lake, which in the spring overflowed the wells, had subsided six or eight feet.’ The salt springs of Salina are found on the margin of an extensive marsh.22