Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/238

230 the deposit on the island of Trinidad very great importance as a source of supply for all the Atlantic Coast cities and even those as far west as Denver, while the Pacific Coast cities have been supplied from deposits in California, which to some extent have competed with Trinidad pitch, not only in the Mississippi Valley, but even in New York and other Eastern cities.

The deposits in Trinidad are comprised in the so-called lake and extensive masses outside of it that have either overflowed from the lake or have been derived from independent sources. In the aggregate the extent of the deposits can only be estimated, as their boundaries cannot be determined with any approach to accuracy. They amount, without any doubt, to several millions of tons.

While I have classed the Trinidad pitch with the asphaltes, it is really a unique substance. I have elsewhere called it 'Parianite,' from

the beautiful bay of Paria, near the coast of which the deposit occurs. The lake is a lake only in name; the deposit, without doubt, filling the crater of an old mud volcano. As described for more than a century preceding 1890, it exhibited an expanse of about one hundred and fourteen acres, with a nearly circular outline, in which irregular areas of pitch are separated by smaller areas of water. Around the borders of the lake, vegetation, commencing at some distance from the edge, is rooted in the pitch itself, and, increasing in vigor as the border is approached, becomes upon the land a tropical jungle of canna and palms, perhaps thirty feet in height. In the center is a circle of islands that float on the pitch. The irregular water areas are many feet in depth, with nearly perpendicular sides, containing very transparent water that