The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-17
PITCH LAKE OF TRINIDAD
ONE OF THE WONDERS OF TEE
 WORLD

Lake Solid Enough to Walk Upon | Out Of Which Thousands of Tons o1
 Pitch Are Annually Taken, Yet
 Which Never Materially Decreases,
 Ns Nature Keeps Up an E1haustless supply.
 l Special Correspondence of the Journal
 and Courier}
 La Brea, Trinidad island B. w. l..
 March r, 1902. 1 A small passenger steamer makes the circuit of Trinidad island three times
 every week, calling at all the coast vil- lages Among it's advertised attractions is the fact that tourists may disem- 1 bark at the village nearest the great Pitch Lake and have ample time to iu- spect that wonder of the world while the vessel goes on it's way, and be pick
 ed up on the return trip, eight or ten
 hours later, Sailing from Port-of- Spain in a south-easterly direction, you coast for many miles along the edge of vast mangrove swamp-the very same in which Columbus saw that marvel he described to his sovereign, of oysters growing on trees" Back of the swamp. miles of yelloWish-green sugar-cane, billowing in the breeze like wind swept ocean, stretch away to the cen- tral forests; while her and there shell tered coves with silvery beaches, or bright little rivers dancing down to the sea, furnish ideal harbors for the vil- lages aforesaid. Among the latter is San ernando-Trinidad' second city, in size, if not in importance-curio situated on a high, eonical hill, into the sides of which shelves have been cut to furnish standing room for the houses. The dark forests of the interior are said to be hunters paradise, though as yet partially unexplored and haunted with every tropical terror. So lofty are the trees that an ordinary shotgun fails to carry to their leafy tops; and in such close ranks are they marshalled, SO, firmly bound up and interlacad with vines and creepers, that when a tree is .tut It NftiIllol Idllr Dul IetIlilllS SLdnilVS upright, lashed to it's fellow giants by a thousand natural bindings In this primeval wilderness are countless spe- eies of brilliant plunged birds, paint ed Hazards that look like the visions of a nightmare: monkeys manifestly as human as the black pccaninnes of the towns; frogs, big as cats, whose tunefu voices make the eternal twilight ring; insects of every kind and vicious pro- pensity, arboreal, terrestrial aerial and and serpents inuumera bic, from boas of largest size and muscular strength to crush an OK to far more dangerous vipers not longer than your finger There are snakes overhead, stretched along the branches of the trees; snakes under foot hidden in fall en leaves and tangled creepers: snakes in the marshes. tiny lakes, brooks, rjv- ars-snakes everywhere, mostly deadly as death itself-and alert to kill A Hunters paradise, indeedl"
 At La Bree-a queer, f1at-topped pen- nsula. thirty-siX miles below Port-of- Spain-the steamer casts anchor and passengers for the Pitch Lake are sent Z ashore in row-boats Your nose is as- 7dliVt Dg p. SliOilS' Dul not ulpIP3SdII 1dor, as of burning tar. brought off in gusts by the landward breeze You ob- serve that the rowers take great care Q avoid the black rocks that protrude heir ugly heads above the water on eV- sry side when the idle is low, and are m even greater menace to navagation when covered, They are the celebrated bitch reefs which here take the place if rocks, They used to stretch directly lcross the entrance to the little harbor md have stranded many vessel: un- il, few years ago, the Engllshmen vho own the place dug away a vast mount of the strange substance and ent to to Paris-Whera it now figures in he streets as asphalt pavement You and upon pitch-CoVered beach, which .oks like one enormous smooth black ock. Every pebble is a lump of pitch, very little tide-pOo enclosed within valls of the same Far as the eye can ec, pitch appears to be bubbling out of heb rown earth, drawn up by the blis- ering sun pitch everywhere nothing ut pitch. No wonder that the denizens f this oldest corner of creation are ex- ctly the color of pitch-muddy brown, lldNSu Nltil SIllIiS Dldch-dllu lldL the ne topic \of conversation among them pitch and it's current market price hey continually breathe the air of itcb they live on it, they work in it, hey wash in it; do they eat it too? here is a small village on the nat-top- [ ed point, called La Brea, every one of hose citizens makes his living out of l itch, either cutting it, in blocks as if it l ere ice-out of the lake or conveying (
 to the several boiling down factories, ' I packing it into barrels, or shipping q
 to New York London, Liverpool | ars or the uttermost parts of the V arth. Piles of crude pitch, in the form I large blocks, lie scattered all about c le wharves; and constant procession c bulock-carts bringing mora pitch, c 1mes jolting down the long gent'e de- l ivity leading from the lake Negro | uides are as numerous and important r ere as members of the same fraternity I Niagara Falls and the Mammoth c ave-all clamoring to Show the sights . ah"-for a consideration. Having se- a cted your sable conductor, (after the a lrgain is thoroughly understood, if t )u are sophisticated, to be paid for D hen the work is done), you are hus- i' ed without ceremony into one of the c turnig carts and are rattled slowly up W