234 



TRINIDAD I THEN AND NOW. 



to your ankles. I have also heard people lead their 

 hearers to believe that the pitch is so soft in this par- 

 ticular place that you have only to dip a bottle down 

 in it and fill dt up ; it is true you may do so in the 

 -water but not in the pitch. The whole place, with 

 this exception, is, as I have stated, easily passed over 

 by an active man or woman. If there are a few days' 

 continuous heavy rain, it is true it is not so easy, but 

 even then if you are so inclined you can wade 

 through it without any fear of it reaching above your 

 knees unless you fall into a hole when perhaps you 

 will get a ducking to your shoulders. 



It ds said that Sir "Walter Raleigh on his visit to 

 Trinidad caused his ships to be coated over with the 

 La Brea pitch. In order to have done so he must 

 have either taken it from the oozing place or boiled it 

 down to a thinner consistency. Admiral Cochrane, 

 afterwards Lord Dundonald, who had a concessdon 

 of part of this place, sent two shiploads of pitch to 

 England to see if he could find some use for it, or dis- 

 til it into petroleum. He failed in both purposes 

 and he then erected works at the place now called 

 Brighton and endeavoured to manufacture paraffin 

 candles. He also failed dn this, but the remains of 

 the works were to be seen in my early days, and I, on 

 one of Lady Dundonald 's numerous visits to La Brea 

 pointed this site out to her. This will be more fully 

 described under 6 i Oil Fields. 99 Soon after Lord Dun- 

 donald 's failure to find a market for the pitch which 

 he shipped to England, a colonist said what in a sense 

 may be deemed to have been prophetic : " Should any 



