Analyses have been made of Mayinit salt as prepared by the crude method of the Igorot.  The showing is excellent when the processes are considered, the finished salt having 86.02 per cent of sodium chloride as against 90.68 per cent for Michigan common salt and 95.35 for Onondaga common salt.

Table of salt composition

Constituent elements
Mayinit salt[31]
Common fine —­

Saturated brine
Evaporated salt
Baked salt
Michigan salt[32]
Onondaga salt.

Per cent
per cent
per cent
per cent
per cent

Calcium sulphate 0.73 1.50 0.46 0.805 1.355

Sodium sulphate
.92
6.28
10.03 —­ —­

Sodium chloride 7.95 72.19 86.02 90.682 95.353

Insoluble matter
2.14
.16
.45 —­ —­

Water 88.03 19.19 1.78 6.752 3.000

Undetermined
.23
.68
.1.26 —­ —­

Calcium chloride —­ —­ —­
.974
.155

Magnesium chloride —­ —­ —­
.781
.136

Total 100 100 100 99.994 99.999

One house produces from six to thirty cakes of salt at each baking.  A cake is valued at an equivalent of 5 cents, thus making an average salt house, producing, say, fifteen cakes per month, worth 9 pesos per year.  Salt houses are seldom sold, but when they are they claim they sell for only 3 or 4 pesos.

Sugar

In October and November the Bontoc Igorot make sugar from cane.  The stalks are gathered, cut in lengths of about 20 inches, tied in bundles a foot in diameter, and stored away until the time for expressing the juice.

The sugar-cane crusher, shown in Pl.  CXVIII, consists of two sometimes of three, vertical, solid, hard-wood cylinders set securely to revolve in two horizontal timbers, which, in turn, are held in place by two uprights.  One of the cylinders projects above the upper horizontal timber and has fitted over it, as a key, a long double-end sweep.  This main cylinder conveys its power to the others by means of wooden cogs which are set firmly in the wood and play into sockets dug from the other cylinder.  Boys commonly furnish the power used to crush the cane, and there is much song and sport during the hours of labor.

Two people, usually boys, sitting on both sides of the crusher, feed the cane back and forth.  Three or four stalks are put through at a time, and they are run through thirty or forty times, or until they break into pieces of pulp not over three or four inches in length.

The juice runs down a slide into a jar set in the ground beneath the crusher.

The boiling is done in large shallow iron boilers over an open fire under a roof.  I have known the Igorot to operate the crusher until midnight, and to boil down the juice throughout the night.  Sugar-boiling time is known as a-su-fal’-i-wis.