94 ACCOUNT OF THE MUD VOLCANOES IN TRINIDAD. 



of remarkable round little hills, each from eighty to a hundred 

 feet in height. Our path on leaving these led us through 

 some very thick wood of tall trees, till we found ourselves 

 again upon a pretty steep regular ascent, which had nothing 

 remarkable in it, except the diminishing height of the trees as 

 we went up. Only the tops of these trees, which were of the 

 kind that usually grow near lagoons and salt marshes, at last 

 appeared above the ground, as we opened a perfectly uniform 

 round bare platform, of several acres, with different chimneys 

 in the shape of truncated cones, the highest of them not ex- 

 ceeding three feet, some of which were throwing out, with a 

 strong bubbling noise, salt water, about as salt as that of the 

 Gulf of Paria, loaded, as much as it could be, to preserve its 

 fluidity, with argillaceous earth. In some of the chimneys this 

 went on slowly, or not at all ; in others it might be called a 

 pretty active cold ebullition. The surface of the platform 

 round the chimneys was perfectly firm, and one of our party 

 picked up a white sea shell, of the turbinated kind, in the act 

 of being thrown out along with the mud. 



We afterwards procured various pyritic fragments that had 

 been picked up in a similar manner ; but the inhabitants of the. 

 quarter assured us, that the ebullition, even during its greatest 

 activity, was quite cold. The smooth circular platform of the 

 chimneys was bounded by a perfectly regular parapet of clay, 

 about three feet in height, propped up, as it were, by the tops 

 of the trees, that, like shrubs, were shooting out of the ground 

 immediately behind it. This appearance was most likely to 

 be referred to the buried trees around having had time to 

 shoot out in the interval between the two last great eruptions, 

 which take place only during the hottest months of dry sea- 

 sons, and then the noise is described to be like the loudest 

 cannon, the mud being thrown up to the height of at least 



thirty 



