season of the year. The water which yields this salt works in from out of
the sea through a hole in the sandbank before mentioned, like a sluice,
and that only in spring tides when it fills the pond more or less,
according to the height of the tides. If there is any salt in the ponds
when the flush of water comes in it presently dissolves: but then in 2 or
3 days after it begins to kern; and so continues kerning till either all
or the greatest part of the salt water is congealed or kerned; or till a
fresh supply of it comes in again from the sea. This water is known to
come in only at that one passage on the north part of the pond; where
also it is deepest. It was at a spring of the new moon when I was there;
and I was told that it comes in at no other time but at the new moon
spring tides; but why that should be I can't guess. They who come hither
to lade salt rake it up as it kerns, and lay it in heaps on the dry land,
before the water breaks in anew: and this is observable of this salt
pond, that the salt kerns only in the dry season, contrary to the salt
ponds in the West Indies, particularly those of the island Salt Tortuga,
which I have formerly mentioned, for they never kern there till the rains
come in about April; and continue to do so in May, June, July etc. while
the wet season lasts; and not without some good shower of rain first: but
the reason also of this difference between the salt ponds of Mayo and
those of the West Indies why these should kern in the wet season, and the
former in the dry season, I shall leave to philosophers.

Our nation drives here a great trade for salt, and have commonly a
man-of-war here for the guard of our ships and barks that come to take it
in; of which I have been informed that in some years there have not been
less than 100 in a year. It costs nothing but men's labour to rake it
together, and wheel it out of the pond, except the carriage: and that
also is very cheap; the inhabitants having plenty of asses for which they
have little to do besides carrying the salt from the ponds to the seaside