CHAPTER II. 

 THE LAKE OF PITCH. 



HERETOFORE we had sailed and paddled through a 

 land of mangroves and water, where, with the excep- 

 tion of one or two tiny muddy islets in the forest, there was 

 no solid ground. One day the last of innumerable turns of 

 a narrow cano brought our sloop in sight of real earth — the 

 first dry land of eastern Venezuela. A rough wooden wharf 

 supporting a narrow-gauge line of rails appeared, and beyond 

 rose a steep hill, dotted here and there with little thatched 

 huts, each clinging to a niche scooped out of the clay. We 

 were at the village of Guanoco (Wah-no'co), the shipping 

 point of the pitch lake. A few steps beyond the last hut and 

 one was in the primeval forest — so limited is man's influ- 

 ence in this region of rapidly growing plants. 



For five miles the little toy rails zigzagged their uneven way 

 through the jungle. On one side was swamp, into which one 

 could penetrate but a short distance before encountering the 

 advance-guard of the mangroves, the front of the vast host 

 which stretched eastward mile after mile to the sea. West 

 of the track the land rose ten or twenty feet in many places, 

 but even where level it soon lost its swampy character. At 

 the end of the line the strange pitch lake itself appeared 

 as a great plain, on the borderland between low swamps and 

 the foot-hills of the mountains. This was our tramping- 

 ground, and we found it a veritable wonderland of birds and 

 beasts and flowers. 



One of the first things which attracted our attention were the 

 Orioles or Cassiqucs ''''' — great black and yellow beauties with 



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