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22 DAYS IN THE SUN
sun, the summer drought and the saltiness of the sea
here create most favorable conditions for the winning
of salt. But only a few of the salt fields are still in
use; the rest of the vast excavated region now lies fal-
low, frequented only by shrimp-fishers and sea birds.
It has been choked by the dead hand of the state.
One is hardly surprised to learn that salt here, in
the place in which it is produced, costs the consumers
four times as much as in Denmark, because the state
collects more than two million dollars in taxes every
year from this indispensable foodstuff. In Spain, many
sources of wealth are disorganized in this way.
Ridiculous as it may seem, it is actually a paying busi-
ness to steal a few pots of salt in the midst of the
wealth of the salt fields; and an expensive system of
inspection is maintained in order to prevent such thefts.
The surfaces of the pyramids are hardened so that in
many cases dynamite has to be used in order to break
off the salt.
The city of Cadiz must of course live; its whiteness
is not enough. It no longer affords even a port for
mariners, but seeks to mulct them in other ways, by
means of octrois, duties and extortionate prices of pro-
visions. Freight rates are thus made more prohibitive
and shipowners usually prefer to dispatch their ships
to the Mediterranean, sending them to the more recent
salt fields of Sicily and the northern coast of Africa.
Meanwhile, the fields at Cadiz are permitted to
harden and grow old, and are no longer able to repay
in dry bread the interest of all the human labor that
has been put into their excavation.
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