Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/85

 Rh to have read, is that which borders on the Gulph of Taman in Crim Tartary: from the representation of travellers, springs of naptha and petroleum equally abound, and they describe volcanic mounds precisely similar to those of Point Icaque. Pallas's explanation of their origin seems to me very satisfactory, and I think it not improbable that the River Don and Sea of Azof may have acted the same part in producing these appearances in the one case, as the Orinoco and Gulph of Paria appear to have done in the other. It may be supposed that the destruction of a forest or perhaps even a great Savanna on the spot, would be a more obvious mode of accounting for this singular phenomenon; but, as I shall immediately state, all this part of the island is of recent alluvial formation, and the land all along this coast is daily receiving a considerable accession from the surrounding water. The Pitch-lake with the circumjacent tract, being now on the margin of the sea, must in like manner have had an origin of no very distant date; besides, according to the above representation of Capt. Mallet, and which has been frequently corroborated, a fluid bitumen oozes up and rises to the surface of the water on both sides of the island, not where the sea has encroached on and overwhelmed the ready-formed land, but where it is obviously in a very rapid manner depositing and forming a new soil.

From a consideration of the great hardness, the specific gravity, and the general external characters of the specimens submitted a few years ago to the examination of Mr. Hatchett, that gentleman was led to suppose that a considerable part of the aggregate mass at Trinidad was not pure mineral pitch or asphaltum, but rather a porous stone of the argillaceous genus much impregnated with bitumen.