204- PITCH LAKE IN TRINIDAD. 



ity. In this point of view, this lake is of vast national 

 importance, and more especially to a great maritime power. 

 Its importance '* * s indeed singular, that the attention of government 

 in this view, should not have been more forcibly directed to a subject of 

 such magnitude: the attempts that have hitherto been made 

 to render it extensively useful have for the most part been 

 cnly feeble and injudicious, and have consequently proved 

 abortive. This vast collection of bitumen might in all pro- 

 bability afford an inexhaustible supply of an essential article 

 of naval stores, and being situate on the margin of the sea 

 could be wrought and shipped with little inconvenience or 

 expense*. It would however be great injustice to Sir 

 Alexander Cochrane not to state explicitly, that he has at 

 various time*, during his long and active command on the 

 Leeward Island station, taken considerable pains to insure a 

 proper and fair trial of this mineral production for the highly 

 important uses of which it is generally believed to be capa- 

 ble. But whether it has arisen from certain perverse occur- 

 rences, or from the prejudice of the mechanical superintend- 

 ants of the colonial dock yards, or really, as some have 

 pretended, from an absolute unfitness of the substance in 

 question, the views of the gallant admiral have been inva- 

 riably thwarted, or his exertions rendered altogether fruitless. 

 Not fairly I was at Antigua in 1809, when a transport arrived laden 

 tried. w jth this pitch for the use of the dock yard at English Har- 



bour: it had evidently been hastily collected with little care 

 or zeal from the beach, and was of course much contaminated 

 with sand and other foreign substances. The best way 

 would probably be to have it properly prepared on the spot, 

 and brought to the state in which it may be serviceable, 

 A preservative Previously to its exportation. I have frequently seen it 

 against worms, used to pay the bottoms of small vessels, for which it is 

 particularly well adapted, as it preserve-, them from the nu- 

 merous tribe of worms so abundant in tropical countries - }". 



* This island contains also a great quantity of valuable timber, and 

 several plants which yield excellent hemp. 



f The different kinds of bitumen have always been found particularly- 

 obnoxious to the class of insects ; there can be little doubt but that they 

 formed ingredients in the Egyptian compound for embalming bodies, 

 and the Arabians are said to avail themselves of them in preserving the 

 trapping* of their horses. Vide Jameson's Mineralogy. 



There 



