Mountain of Salt
We had ten days before our carriage was to take us out west, and so some acquaintenances and I decided to visit a local oddity, called by some The Salt Mountain. I had never heard of such a thing. Our land is so vast and strange that its wonders cannot be catalogued, not to say glimpsed, in the lifetime of an ordinary man.
We hired as a guide Scripture Johnson, and his common-law wife, Patience. They were a ruffianly looking pair, and practically indistinguishable from one another, excepting that she had a shorter beard. Their filthy appearance was insult enough to decent society, but in addition they sought each other’s affections at regular intervals, and without the benefit of the saving cloak of night, or of a closed door. When this would happen (often while astride their mules), we set to with a groan of distaste which was matched by the braying protests of their beasts. “For pity’s sake”, they seemed to be saying, “Ride us into dust if you will, but spare us the sight of your unnatural coupling!”
They looked to all the world as a pair of twin brothers, slobbering over each other - the stuff of nightmares.
We found it necessary to ride upwind of them, which did not benefit the cause of their guiding, but we thought it better to take our chances than to endure their scent. Their beasts were denied this option, and so suffered greatly.
The object of our journey was supposed to be not more than forty miles south of St. Louis, but after three days we had not raised sight of its snowy prominence. Each morning we tested the air with our noses, hoping for a sea-tinged breeze signifying that the great salt promontory was within reach. For three mornings we were disappointed. By the fourth morning I was determined that our guide knew nothing of the famous mountain, and had taken us for fools. Scripture was satisfied that all would come out as foretold, but I grew increasingly annoyed by his incompetence. Perhaps I lacked patience.
That was what we call a groaner. The joke, if I may call it that, is a little frayed around the edges and will not stand on its own without visible support. The existence of such support only serves to identify the pun as weak and unable to remain fresh and upright on its own merit, and therefore ought to be retired or at least sent for a long vacation, where it may rest and gather its strength, until the public has forgotten its existence, and may be persuaded to enjoy it again many years in the future.
By the morning of the fourth day we were full of grumblings and of a mood to return to St. Louis, but Johnson assured us that we would raise the mountain early that day. We decided to give it another try.
The sky was gray and threatening. Dense flocks of black birds wound above us, crying in alarm. We were a mile or more from a river, traveling along its old course. Meandering ravines pulled one way and another. Thick cane breaks and old, vine-laden trees stretched over head and seemed to be following our slow progress. We talked little, then not at all. I imagine we each harbored dark thoughts as our mules carefully picked their way through the tangled growth all about us.
For an hour and a half we rode thus, until Scripture Johnson called a halt and pointed ahead, saying: “That way lies the mountain.” We leaned forward and strained our eyes seeking the snowy pinnacle, but all that greeted our gaze was more thicket. He happily explained that some quarter mile ahead the land rose steadily, culminating eventually in the looked-for salt mountain. ‘It’s wore down some,” he explained as we rode. “First Injuns, then regular folks, have been whittling at it for many a year. Deer too, they like to get their salt lick. Then again, the rains and the snows have had their go. It must have been something in its day, when you could see it from clear in St. Lou.”
We began to feel restive, and shifted in our saddles uncomfortably.
“But,” I ventured, “it’s still a mountain, isn’t it? All made of white salt?”
“Why, I guess some people still call it a mountain, so it don’t matter what some other people might say. It’s what the thing itself has come to be known as, what counts. Isn’t that right? Why, you were known by your name from the day of your birth, wasn’t you? But here you are, no longer a babe in arms, tall and strapping, full of whiskers, but still known by the same name. Isn’t that right?”
“Now see, I’m not much for philosophy. Can’t you tell me straight out - is it or is it not a mountain of salt, still?” He felt at his chin and shared a glance with Patience. I shuddered as she returned his look with a wink.
“It’s what’s left of a mountain. And there it is!” He gestured theatrically at the dense growth before us.
It looked no different than what we had been clawing through for the entirety of the morning, except that it was of a slightly higher elevation. As we approached the most impenetrable part of the thicket however, we saw that beyond the dry dead timber the ground was cleared. Finding that we could go no further while mounted we left our mules and picked our way through the bracken.
What we had thought was an impassable forest was in reality the ring of old rotten growth which surrounded the salt mountain like a protective wall. Nothing will grow on salt, but the force of nature crowded it closely, and sent exploratory vines, as thick as my wrist and as old as myself, across its surface like so many cracks in the surface of a frozen pond in March.
It was less a mountain, much less, than a dome. The open space created by the mound of hardened salt was little more than the amount of land required for a village green. And a small village, at that. It rose, and tapered from the ground where we stood to a promontory perhaps eight feet into the air. It was uniformly rounded, of rough texture, and gray or brown in color. Some of the vines had worn grooves into its surface. Dead leaves had also collected amid the arteries, which we brushed aside to better view this wonder. We chipped at it with our knives and put it on our tongues.
It was salt, but had an unpleasant taste of metal. “White folks stopped coming here a couple generations ago,” Johnson explained. “They found better salt somewheres else. Plus, some said it made your teeth blue.”
I imagined the place as it had once been, deep beneath the waters of the ocean. For uncounted eons it had lain there, quietly accumulating its layers of salt. Its only visitors then had been fish, or leviathan. There in the vast cold it had rested, surrounded by the dark and quiet. Then, some cataclysm had occurred, thrusting the sea bottom upward to the surface. Rivers and rains had cleansed the white peak, swelling rivers had cut remorselessly into its flanks. Its caustic matter repelled attempts by green growing things to inhabit its surface.
More eons passed, and finally men came. Savage Indians, they used the salt to cure their meat and to give it savor. A hundred generations of these men carved its sides, making it smaller. Each winter exacted a further price, melting it by degrees. When finally the White Man arrived, it was a mere suggestion of its former majesty. They too took its bounty, but soon found better sources for their salt. It was abandoned and forgotten, except by those few who rarely visited the lost mound, bringing with them a train of the curious.
We removed some large chips and placed them in our saddle bags, as souvenirs to enthrall our children. I had lost my piece before we began our journey west.
