Nature and Art, December 1, 1866.] 
THE PITCH LAKE. 
207 
pride of tlie lake, and which seemed to enjoy an 
immunity from destruction, even though the molten 
pitch boiled and bubbled close to its borders — may 
to-morrow have vanished clear away, so that “ the 
place thereof shall know it no more.” Other 
islets will succeed, born of the caprice of the 
asphalte, without apparent reason why or because ; 
and they will endure, like their predecessors, for 
a while, to be like them snuffed out at the last. 
There is another very remarkable feature about 
the Pitch Lake, which has been already alluded to, 
but not mentioned. It is the liberal system of 
irrigation which has been provided on its surface, 
by means of numerous small natural canals that 
intersect the asphalte in all directions, crossing and 
mingling with each other, but never combining so 
as to form one large body of single stream water. 
These canals are seldom more than seven feet 
broad, more often they are from one to three feet. 
Their depth is generally equal to their breadth, 
their sides slope inwards till they meet in a point at 
the bottom, so that they may be said to be trian- 
gular troughs cut out by themselves in the pitch, 
over the face of which they run in an irregular 
course, fulfilling some function which is not, how- 
ever, very apparent. They are filled .to the brim 
with the clearest possible fresh water, which is not 
stagnant, but runs on with a slow current, that 
would seem to be proper to the circulatory system 
which the contriver of them has established, though 
neither the cause nor the effect of it has been scien- 
tifically explained. Fish, and report says alligators, 
have been found in these streams, of which the 
water is clear and perfectly fresh, though tainted 
with a flavour of pitch. The bottoms of some of 
the canals are exceedingly soft ; poles thrust into 
them disappear almost immediately. Others, how- 
ever, allow of being stood upon. 
These fresh water courses are the more extra- 
ordinary that the lake is supposed to be in direct 
communication from below with the sea. Not only 
is it reasonable to suppose that the submarine 
volcano which, a short distance south-west of Cape 
la Brea, throws out large quantities of a mineral 
resembling in composition the mineral in the lake, 
is in communication with the lake, but actual ex- 
perience has shown that between the lake and the 
sea there is some free channel. Poles, marked for 
sake of identification, have been thrust into the 
lake and engulphed, and in the course of a few days 
afterwards they have been picked up on the sea-shore 
— so that it is evident there must be some means of 
communication between the lake and the sea. It 
would be but a speculation, founded on no actual 
experience, to say that* there is concert between the 
pitch spring and the lake on the west side of the 
island and the submarine spring near Point Mayaro 
on the east side. Such concert is, however, ex- 
ti’emely probable, and it is, moreover, likely that the 
mud volcanoes already spoken of as in action forty 
miles south of Cape la Brea, are but different mani- 
festations of the same principle which is in opera- 
tion beneath the Pitch Lake. Whether this be so 
or not, it is very remarkable that volcanoes which 
have produced the most disastrous effects upon 
places more remote than Trinidad from the scene of 
their first ebullition, should have spared to molest 
Trinidad itself. In 1797 an earthquake violently 
shook the Antilles, but it was not felt in Trinidad ; 
and a short time afterwards, when the province of 
Cumana on the mainland, extending to the Gulf of 
Paria, was desolated by a like catastrophe, the 
shock was only slightly felt in the island, and there 
was not in consequence any perceptible difference 
in the operations of the various volcanoes existing 
in it. In 1812 the city of Caraccas was destroyed 
by an earthquake, and thirty days afterwards the 
Souffriere mountain in St. Vincent's, distant 400 
miles in a straight line and separated by that 
length of sea, burst out with signal fury after 
a silence of ninety years. Bumblings had been 
heard at intervals during the month between the 
outbreak at Caraccas and the outbreak at St. Vin- 
cent’s, and there were other signs which went to 
show that the two were connected and proceeded 
from the same cause. Trinidad, however, felt 
nothing of all this disturbance, and there is no 
memory of disastrous eruptions having been ex- 
perienced there. It enjoys a singular and estimable 
immunity from serious earthquakes and evil-doing 
volcanoes, as it does from hurricanes; and cata- 
strophes which involve districts adjacent to it in ruin 
pass it by without suffering it to endure more than 
the shock of a slight concussion. Nature has been 
lavish of her bounties to the place, and has poured 
out her gifts of beauty with liberal hand. She has, 
however, provided in the Pitch Lake, and in the 
harmless volcanoes in the neighbourhood, a visible 
warning against a feeling of false security. The 
pitch, which has hitherto done no more than over- 
flow its basin and cover the country for some dis- 
tance with a thick skin of asphalte, even extending 
its operations to the sea which it underruns for 
some way from its brink, may at any time belie the 
experience of the inhabitants and show itself in the 
terrible shape of an active discharging volcano, having 
a crater some two miles in circumference, full of 
the most destructive and ruthless agents it is pos- 
sible to imagine. What has actually occurred there 
in times long past it is not possible to know. The 
historical records of the island are few. Trinidad 
was discovered by Columbus in 1498, when it was 
thickly populated by Caribs ; but the Spaniards 
failed to take possession till 1588, and thereafter, 
as the island did not yield gold, it was neglected 
by them, and was not at any time much noticed 
by the sea-faring nations. It was not till 1797 
that it came into British hands by conquest, 
and it does not appear that before that time 
there was any public account taken of what 
happened in the island : at all events, no such 
record remains, so that we are considerably in the 
dark as to the antecedents both of the Pitch Lake 
and of the other volcanoes. What we do know, 
however, warrants the remarks that have been 
made ; and though the character of the basin of 
the lake would not seem to betray a volcanic 
tendency — it is of clay, — there is nothing to show 
