Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1894-04-12
A CARGO OF ASPHALT.
A STICKY SUBSTANCE THAT IS
IMPORTED FOR OUR ROADS.

Is Used in Making Asphalt-Something
About the Island and Its Workers.
How the Stuff Is Handled.
The asphalt barks from the West Indies
are about the only vessels outside the coast
ing schooners that ever favor Washington
with visit. Two of them are lying off the
wharf at tie foot of New Hampshire ave
nue., and are well worth visit
Down in the hold the cargo looks like
the edge OF a dead lava field, black and
scanned, and apparently as hard as rock;
but the hardness is deceptive. Break up IA
bushel of the pitch, " as it is known to the
trade, and pile the fragments on top of the
big asphalt field which fills the whole of
the lower deck, and by tomorrow morning
they would disappear, sunken slowly back
into the parent mass. This slow running
quality makes the cargo one of the most
detested among the captains in the island
trade, for when the ship has been listed
over to port or starboard for couple of
days, while running before strong wind,
the whole cargo will quietly shift over and
have to be broken up and trimmed back
to its proper position to keep the ship on
even keel.
Trinidad, the island from which prac
tically all the asphalt of the world is now
drawn, is a British. possession in the West
Indies. 1t was one of the little spots of
terra firma against which Columbus ran,
when in 1888 he pushed his explorations
farther westward in search of that mari
ners' phantasm, the northwest passage.
The island was then inhabited solely by
Caribs, wild and warlike, but withal in
telligent, race, not unlike the North Amer.
lean Indians, peculiar in their language,
which, like the Choctaw of our own west
ern tribe, has been mastered by few if any
white men, For many years the island
remained a neglected dependency of Spain
with a constantly dwindling population,
mostly natives and imported negroes. In
1871 it passed into the hands of the British
government and has remained an English
colony since.
There are but two towns OF importance
on the island-Port of Spain and San Fer
nando. These live mostly by their inn
ports, the chief productions of the island
beyond its own necessities being asphalt
and cocoanuts. The sugar crop is large.
but it does not pay to export it. The pop
ulatiOn of the towns is mixed. English is
the court language, but the majority of
the people Are negroes, descendants of the
old slave stock, who talk a patois of min.
gled French Spanish and English that is
/ described as the most back handedest
| lingo any heather ever invented.
Some of &be original Caribs are still to
be found among the island people, but
they are rapidly disappearing, and in their
place is now seen the imported cody. The
cody trade, which was originally insti,
tuted tc furnish cheap labor for the plan,
tations, was in former times terrible dis.
| grace to the islands and partook of more
than all the horrors of the African slave
trade. Thousands of the miserable Asiat.
| les were sacrificed in the business by the
greed and inhumanity of the masters who
brought them over, and although imported
under the guise of Il labor contract, mot
one in hundreds of them ever lived to re-
turn home. Stringent laws governing the
traffic are now enacted, however, and, what
is more to the purpose, are well enforced,
and many of the coolies by the time they
have served their eight years contract out
are well to do citizens, being paid for their
work by the piece and saving nearly all
they earn.
The great pitch lake, which is the chief
wonder and attraction Of the island, is sit
uated in low, sandy stretch of the south.
west coast, near Cape Corbaray. The sur.
rounding country is low and malarial, in
striking contrast to the high hills and rich
woodlands of the coast farther back. The
lake is owned by the British government
and leased by it to an American firm which
controls the trade for the United States
Their present lease has forty-two years yet
to run. The laborers are all negroes, even
the coolies shrinking from the heat and
low fevers of the place. The lake itseli
is about mile in diameter, hard at the
edges and softening toward the middle
The surface is continually changing. ap
parently from some subterranean action
and little oases of dry land and even tree!
and shrubs will disappear in single
night and fresh islands of soil be reared il
other places.
The lake is in all probability merely al
unusually large deposit of bitumen or sof
coal that has undergone its transforma
tion from decaying vegetable matter il
contact with water, and too near the sur
face for the earth pressure above to harder
it thoroughly. Hundreds of the negroes
the year around toll at the lakes edge
taking out cargo after cargo from the sup
ply that seems never to diminish. The,
work under overseers of their own colo
and are paid at the rate of seventy-tw,
cents day. The asphalt crust is broker
up with picks and crowbars, and is loadet
on dump carts drawn by single sun driet
mule, in whom the constant boiling TEN
perature seems to have concentrated al
the native meanness of his species.
The carts crunch through a long sand,
road down to the wharf at the water
edge, where the load is dumped and carre'
by wheelbarrows on board the lighters
which in turn carry it out to the ships, ly
ing half mile out in the shoal water
The rough Jumps of pickings are hoiste
on board in baskets and piled in the hold
where they sink down into compact mass
requiring fresh filling the next day, an
so on till the solid cargo is completed.
When the vessel reaches its port of dis
charge the asphalt has to be broken u
again before it can be removed from tn
hold. Owing to the viscus quality of tn
native pitch" it has in the course of age
filtered through the sandy soil around tn
lakes, and of late the company has bee
threatened by rival, which has begu
mining operations on the island not ia
from the confines of the older company
territory, uncovering great fields of tn
asphalt that is, If anything, better afte
its filtering process than the original d,
posit.- Washington Post
VIII practets Who Were Little.