Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/83

 Rh of vegetable matter. I was accordingly particular in my inquiries with regard to the existence of beds of coal, but could not learn that there was any certain trace of that substance in the island, and though it may exist at a great depth, I saw no strata that indicate it. A friend indeed gave me specimens of a kind of bituminous shale mixed with sand, which he brought from Point Cedar about twenty miles distant, and I find Mr. Anderson speaks of the soil neat the Pitch-lake containing burnt cinders, but I imagine he may have taken for them the small fragments of the bitumen itself.

An examination of this tract of country could not fail, I think, to be highly gratifying to those who embrace the Huttonian theory of the earth, for they might behold the numerous branches of one of the largest rivers of the world (the Orinoco) bringing down so amazing a quantity of earthy particles as to discolour the sea in a most remarkable manner for many leagues distant, they might see