The New Student's Reference Work/Saltpeter
Salt'peter or Ni'ter is potassium nitrate (KNO2). It generally is in long, colorless, six-sided prisms. Its taste is cooling and very salty. It dissolves in water but not in alcohol. Mixtures of niter and carbon or of niter and sulphur or of all three explode with great energy on applying heat. If saltpeter be thrown on glowing coals, it flashes briskly. Niter is found in India and Persia as a natural product, on the soil or scattered through the upper rocks. But most saltpeter is now made from the Chilean sodium nitrate. Niter is used in making sulphuric acid, nitric acid, fireworks and, especially, gunpowder. It also is a medicine. Sodium nitrate is found abundantly on the surface of the soil in Chile and Peru in the form of cube-like crystals, and so is often called cubic niter. Besides its use in the manufacture of saltpeter, it is a valuable fertilizer. In 1905 1,688,976 tons of this nitrate or Chilean saltpeter, as it is called, were shipped from Chilean ports. See W. H. Russell's Visit to the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá.