We were as yet unconvinced of its carrying qualities, and, not wishing to run the risk of getting stuck in the pitch, we waited the approach of one of the trains of little cable-cars, running from the works out on to the lake, which we could see coming toward us. The brakeman is good enough to stop, and we pile into the ridiculous little steel cars and hang on as best we can, while we are sent flying down over a narrow-gauge track, laid on top of the pitch, to the place where most of the digging is going on.
Here a great crew of black men—black as the pitch in which they stand—with bare feet, all with picks, dig out the wonderful formation, which breaks off in great brittle pieces. Seeing these men so fearlessly defying the forces of nature, we gained confidence, and stepped out of the buckets on to the surface of the so-called “lake;” and although our feet would sink in a half-inch or so when we stood still, we found that we could walk everywhere with perfect safety, with the exception of a few places where the surface seemed to be in big bubbles and disposed to crack and break away under us.
It was remarkable to me that the pitch is both viscous and brittle at the same time. When standing still, the water—thick and yellow, with a sulphurous odour—would ooze up about the feet and form new rivulets, which, uniting, would trickle into some near-by pool. There were innumerable small, crater-like openings, some like air-bubbles in the sea beach, others, deep, black holes, two and three feet in diameter, but no appearance of heat or fire. All over the lake, small springs of yellowish fluid were constantly bubbling up into the pools. The supply of pitch is apparently inexhaustible, for, after a great trench has been dug out along these temporary tracks, some four feet deep, and many rods wide, by the next day the hole will again be so far filled that the mining goes on as before.
The manager told us that it had not been found necessary to change the tram tracks for two years, that the level of the pitch fell only seven inches last year, after immense amounts had been removed for shipment.
The depth of this deposit is not known. It has been sounded a number of times, but it seems to be impossible to find the bottom. I do not know the exact dimensions of the lake, but, making a rough estimate, should say that it is half a mile wide, and about a mile long; its extent is said to be about one hundred and ten acres. The great asphalt deposit in Venezuela, which has been the cause of so much recent trouble,—through, I am sorry to say, the quarrels of two American companies,—is thought by some to be shallower than the one of La Brea, although it is apparently much larger, being in the neighbourhood of ten miles in circumference. This Trinidad pitch is also worked by an American company, under concession from the British Colonial Government.
IV.
It seemed to me that I had never before seen such black pitch or blacker “niggers.” They were a good-humoured lot of men, making no complaint of the heat, although they worked untiringly, bare-footed, in the hot, oozing pitch.
We stopped one fellow, about as black and tattered a figurehead as we could find, and told him we wanted his picture. He was perfectly delighted, and struck a very fetching attitude. After the button had been pressed, we gave him a bit of silver, and then came a howl from a dozen others for a similar opportunity, all posing for us as fancy struck them. Seeing that we were obdurate, the fortunate holder of the silver doubled up with a tremendous laugh, and I can yet see before me his two rows of glistening white teeth and his wreck of a hat and his rag of a shirt, and his bepatched breeches. His laugh so exasperated the others, that one, an elderly gentleman who wore grand side whiskers, shouted out in tones of deepest sarcasm: “Guess I’d git my picture took, too, Sam, if I was such a orangoutang as you is!” It seemed as though they would come to blows, but, had I known the good-humoured blacks better, I should have had no fear, for their battles, fierce as they seem, are only words, and usually end in a laugh.