TV. Account of the Pitch Lake of the Island of Trinidad. 

 'By Nicholas Nugent, M.D.Honorary Member of the Geological Society. 



JjEING desirous to visit the celebrated Lake of Pitch, previously 

 to my departure from the Island of Trinidad, I embarked with that 

 intention in the month of October, 1807, in a small vessel at Port 

 Spain. After a pleasant sail of about thirty miles down the Gulph 

 of Paria, we arrived at the point la Braye, so called by the French 

 from its characteristic feature. It is a considerable headland, about 

 eighty feet above the level of the sea, and perhaps two miles long 

 and two broad. We landed on the southern side of the point, at 

 the plantation of Mr. Vesslgny : as the boat drew near the shore, 

 I was struck with the appearance of a rocky bluff or small promon- 

 tory of a reddish brown colour, very different from the pitch which 

 I had expected to find on the whole shore. Upon examining this spot, 

 I found it composed of a substance corresponding to the porcelain 

 jasper of mineralogists, generally of a red colour, where it had been 

 exposed to the weather, but of light slate blue in the interior ; it is 

 a very hard stone with a conchoidal fracture, some degree of lustre, 

 and is perfectly opake even at the edges; in some places, from the 

 action of the air, it was of a reddish or yellowish brown, and an 

 earthy appearance. I wished to have devoted more time to the 

 investigation of what in the language of the Wernerian school is 

 termed the geognostic relations of this spot, but my companions 



