And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedar’d alleys fling
Nard and cassia’s balmy smells.”
Travel, Adventure and Sport from Blackwood’s Magazine (Edinburgh and London), Vol. vi.
THE LAKE OF PITCH
(TRINIDAD)
CHARLES KINGSLEY
This Pitch Lake should be counted among the wonders of the world; for it is, certainly, tolerably big. It covers ninety-nine acres, and contains millions of tons of so-called pitch.
Its first discoverers were not bound to see that a pitch lake of ninety-nine acres was no more wonderful than any of the little pitch wells—“spues” or “galls,” as we should call them in Hampshire—a yard across; or any one of the tiny veins and lumps of pitch which abound in the surrounding forests; and no less wonderful than if it had covered ninety-nine thousand acres instead of ninety-nine.
As we neared the shore, we perceived that the beach was black with pitch; and the breeze being off the land, the asphalt smell (not unpleasant) came off to welcome us. We rowed in, and saw in front of a little row of wooden houses, a tall mulatto, in blue policeman’s dress, gesticulating and shouting to us. He was the ward policeman, and I found him (as I did all the coloured police) able and courteous, shrewd and trusty. These police are excellent specimens of what can be made of the Negro, or Half-Negro, if he be but first drilled, and then given a responsibility which calls out his self-respect. He was warning our crew not to run aground on one or other of the pitch reefs, which here take the place of rocks. A large one, a hundred yards off on the left, has been almost all dug away, and carried to New York or to Paris to make asphalt pavement.