458 8. F. FecJcham — The Pitch Lake of Trinidad. 



a succession of admirable points from which to view the lake, as no 

 difficulty is experienced in walking upon the ties around the entire 

 loop. The cars are run in groups of four, which, when loaded, have 

 a gross weight of about six thousand pounds. I carefully watched 

 the passage of successive groups of these cars and could not observe 

 any change of level in the road bed as they passed along ; yet 1 am 

 quite certain if a group had been allowed to stand for several hours, 

 that both tramway and cars would have sunk in the pitch. 



The pitch is excavated along this tramway upon the summits of 

 the " areola." Wherever the surface of the pitch is broken, the 

 vesicles are uniformly smaller as the pitch is taken from points 

 removed from the centre of the lake. As the water dries out the 

 vesicles collapse, and the colour changes from brown to bluish-black. 

 If left long enough in the sun, any of the pitch, no matter from 

 what spot it may be taken, will first melt upon the surface, and 

 finally flow into a more or less compact mass. The pitch being dug 

 by the Trinidad Asphalt Company, both within and without the 

 lake, was brown when freshly dug, changing to black on exposure. 

 The same might be said of that dug farther down the slope from 

 village lots by the Trinidad Bituminous Asphalt Company. It was 

 quite evident that as the pitch was taken from points farther and 

 farther from the centre of the lake it had been subjected to more 

 and more pressure, the gas being forced out as a consequence, the 

 vesicles made smaller, and the specific gravity thereby increased. 

 There are enormous masses of pitch within the lake that could not, 

 in my opinion, be distinguished by the eye from the pitch taken 

 from the village lots by either of the companies before mentioned. 

 I am therefore quite at a loss to determine why Mr. Richardson 

 alleges such a specific distinction between what he pleased to term 

 "lake" and " land " asphalt. It appears to me to be a distinction 

 without a difference. 



For further facts concerning the commercial and economic 

 relations of Trinidad Asphalt, the reader is referred to the report 

 of Consul Pierce, which I believe to be one of the most complete 

 and impartial of all the valuable consular reports issued by the 

 State Department. 



It was my intention to include in this paper some statistics 

 regarding the enormous amount of asphaltum of different varieties 

 shipped from La Brea since January 1st, 1890. When a friend 

 applied to the custom house in Port of Spain for an official state- 

 ment, he reported that such information had been refused, on the 

 ground that such a statement would make public private interests, 

 inasmuch as the Trinidad Asphalt Company had shipped several 

 cargoes of "land pitch" to the United States since that date. 



By referring to the maps the reader can clearly distinguish the 

 relative positions of the lake and the adjacent portion of the island. 



University of Michigan, Ann Akbour, Michigan, 

 April loth, 1895. 



