All these explosives are made from nitric acid and this used to be made
from nitrates such as potassium nitrate or saltpeter. But nitrates are
rarely found in large quantities. Napoleon and Lee had a hard time to
scrape up enough saltpeter from the compost heaps, cellars and caves for
their gunpowder, and they did not use as much nitrogen in a whole
campaign as was freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now there
is one place in the world--and so far as we know one only--where
nitrates are to be found abundantly. This is in a desert on the western
slope of the Andes where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and
there was not enough rain to wash away their salts. Here is a bed two
miles wide, two hundred miles long and five feet deep yielding some
twenty to fifty per cent. of sodium nitrate. The deposit originally
belonged to Peru, but Chile fought her for it and got it in 1881. Here
all countries came to get their nitrates for agriculture and powder
making. Germany was the largest customer and imported 750,000 tons of
Chilean nitrate in 1913, besides using 100,000 tons of other nitrogen
salts.
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