The centuries’ old story of the Wied il-Ghasri

salt-pans is not only extraordinary but it also imparts a valuable lesson - that tampering with Mother Nature does not always produce the desired results but it could spell disaster and the end of a dream as in the unfortunate case of the Gozitan watchmaker turned salt-maker.

Anthony Zarb Dimech writes

The ability of salt to preserve food eliminated the dependence on the seasonal availability of food, and it also meant that food could be transported over long distances. However, salt was difficult to obtain, and as such it was a highly-valued trade item. Many salt roads, such as the via Salaria in Italy, had been established as far back as the Bronze Age.

Today, salt is almost universally accessible, relatively cheap and often iodized. It is commonly believed that Roman soldiers were at certain times paid in salt. It is said the soldiers who did their job well were ‘worth their salt’.

This, however, is debatable: ‘salary’ derives from the Latin word ‘salarium’, possibly referring to money given to soldiers so they could buy salt. The Roman Republic and Empire controlled the price of salt, increasing it to raise money for wars, or lowering it to ensure the poorest citizens could easily afford what is an important part of the diet.

Along the Maltese and Gozitan coast there are about 40 sites where salt is still collected using very old traditions, to preserve food. For instance, the Qbajjar salt-pan or ‘salini’ (an Italian derived toponym meaning salt-pans) in Gozo have been used since Roman times for harvesting sea salt.

One of the most remarkable man-made salt pans from the past existed in Gozo and is documented in Frederic Lacroix’s book, Malte et le Goze (1850). Lacroix is renowned for his book with numerous engravings and accounts on Malta and Gozo. With reference to the island of Gozo, one can find engravings on important sites such as Ġgantija and Il-Ġebla tal-Ġeneral as well as several stories, such as those depicting Gozitan bird trapping and fishing skills.

The history surrounding this salt pan is truly intriguing.

Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houl also wrote about this salt pan in 1777 in his publication, Voyage Pittoresque Des Isles De Sicile, De Lipari et De Malte. Houel was a French painter, engraver and draftsman. During his long life he witnessed the reign of Louis XV, the French Revolution, and the period of Napoleon’s First Empire. He spent the years 1776 to 1779 travelling in Sicily, Lipari, and Malta, after which he published numerous, lavishly-illustrated travel books based on his journeys.

A Maltese clockmaker was the owner of a stretch of rock in the inner part of Wied il-Għasri in Gozo. With quite an imagination and ingenuity, he came up with the idea of cutting ‘salini’ (salt-pans) in the rocks, but with a difference from others at the time.

The idea was to dig a well in the rock formation just above a natural cave entrance in the sea. This cave is known as Għar il-Qamħ (Wheat Cave). The rough waves created a fountain that would gently fill in the salt-pans and the heat of the sun would dry the water into salt. In effect, in the long run this would have cost him near to nothing, render him a hefty profit from salt production in the process.

But, as things developed, the end result was disastrous.

As a watchmaker turned salt manufacturer, he had built the usual skandlor - a kind of sea water reservoir that was distributed among several rectangular rock-cut salt-pans so as to facilitate evaporation. Using pulleys and buckets attached to a rope, he constructed a water well in the rock formation that brought up sea water from a height of 50 to 60 feet, after which it was channelled into the reservoir and distributed to the salt-pans.

When he came to operate the project he found it to be very laborious especially in the summer hot months, and to overcome this he started to inspect the rock formation and noticed that the cave under the rock was situated just beyond where he had dug out the salt pans and reservoir. He came up with the idea of breaking the rock perpendicularly and to dig a well and a mule-driven mill. The well was not initially covered and this resulted in accidents and loss of life. He covered the well opening with a wooden tripod and, being a watchmaker, he designed a flat and horizontal stone sun dial, an arloġġ tax-xemx, with a pinnur solidu, solid pointer, and placed on it on top of the tripod. The sundial was an instrument that indicated apparent solar time by the shadow cast by a central projecting pointer on a surrounding calibrated dial. This helped him keep the time of when the workers were to stop for breaks and restart work.

This well-designed project seemed sensible and was executed promptly by a sufficient number of workers, and work was carried out faster. From time to time he inspected the effect of the natural evaporation process. But to his great amazement, he discovered that the salt-pans were losing water. This was not because of natural evaporation but because the water was being absorbed by the extremely spongy and porous rock, which was also collecting mud at the bottom of the salt-pans.

There was immense disappointment and grief in seeing his hopes of cutting costs and increasing production dashed. However as the serene sky and calm sea together with the gentle summer breezes turned into wintry and stormy skies, he made his most important observation which could have provide the positive twist to the story.

The raging swirl of waves driven by the winds would accumulate in the cave , resulting in a rotational force that formed a waterspout, which, finding no way out except through the well he had dug, ran forcefully up into the air and formed a beautiful sea-spray that fell into the salt pans. The size of the waterspout was equal to the width of the well and rose to more than 60 feet in height.

But this initial stroke of luck turned out to be short-lived because during extremely inclement weather the waterspout blew well beyond the salt pans, flooding the land on all sides to a distance of more than a mile. The speed with which the waterspout rose did not allow the winds to bend it downwards enough to fall into the salt pans.

Compounded with heavy rainfall, this wrought havoc on the vegetation. This seawater ravaged the countryside that had been cultivated with so much care. The aftermath left the impression that a wildfire had blazed through the area.

That had never happened before the well had been dug, but the complete balance of nature’s forces had been upset. The opening of the well resulted in the breaking of this balance wreaking havoc and destruction on the land and people’s livelihoods in the area.

The nearby inhabitants filed a lawsuit against the unfortunate watchmaker and asked him to pay an enormous sum in compensation for the damage to their land and crops. But he would never be able to pay the sum, not even in a lifetime, and the constant requests to pay up resulted in such great grief that an illness struck him and led to his demise.

The farmers tried to plug and seal the well with stones, and they succeeded, only to face yet another of Mother Nature’s unpleasant phenomena. The waves accumulated in the cave and, together with a large amount of compressed air at the bottom of the cave, caused the air to expand - turning the waves away with such terrible explosive sounds that they shook the whole rock formation and the surrounding land.

The terrible racket created by the explosions was heard both inside and outside the cave, and also in other nearby caves. The sound was identical to that of barrage of cannons being in rapid succession and in different calibres. The sound was so terrific that it rose fear and alarm among the villagers and farmers, who thought that at any moment a total undermining and upheaval of the rock formation would happen.

This dreadful noise carried on until the well was filled. But when the compressed waves in the cave touched upon the fragile rock at the bottom of the well, the well broke and was reduced to fragments.

In 1777 the well was filled for a third time during very stormy weather and there was still the fear that it could continue to flood and destroy the surrounding agricultural land.

Maltese and tourists alike will soon be able to appreciate a museum of salt production. On 18 February of this year, the disused historic saltpans at Salina were put up for a new lease of life as a €7 million project for the area’s regeneration was approved by the planning authority’s board. The Salina salt-pans are located between Qawra and Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq on the northern side of Malta. The habitat consists of salt-pans and degraded marsh land.

These man-made salt-pans date back to the Knights of St John and have not been used for the production of salt for years. The wooden huts were originally built for salt storage near the salt-pans, and are an unsightly mess. This restoration project is one of the largest of its kind incorporating salt-pans in Malta. The salt-pans will be turned into a museum of salt to educate people on salt production.