Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/240

232 constructed on the Bay of Paria, near the lake, and a trolley line and tramway, leading from the wharf up to and out upon the lake in a loop, by which the pitch since then has been transported direct from the surface of the lake to the vessel being loaded. Formerly the pitch was carried from the beach to ships lying in the bay in lighters, the shipping entailing a great deal of labor from repeated handling. Since the tramway was installed, the pitch is dug along the line of the tramway and thrown into iron buckets, resting on trucks that are propelled along the tramway by an endless cable. Great difficulty was encountered when the tramway was laid to prevent its sinking in the pitch, which, while hard enough on the surface to bear up a loaded team, will slowly engulf any

article of even moderate weight. This trouble was overcome by laying the tramway on a bed of the leaves of the Moriche palm, some of which are twenty-five feet in length. When the car-buckets are loaded they are run to the power-house in groups of three or four, where, after being weighed, they are transferred by an ingenious device from the trucks to a trolley that runs on an endless rope from the lake to the wharf, where the contents of the buckets are dumped into the hold of the ship-like coal. The plant will handle 500 tons a day in the manner described.

Immense quantities of the pitch lie outside the lake, and the pitch from these deposits, wherever worked, is still shipped by means of