The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-17

as it used to be the fashion in this part
 of the world to color human flesh with 1t. The Orinoco Indians and many of
 the Aboriginal island tribes wore no
 clothes, but "roucoued' themselves
 from top to toe.
 The mile-long highway between land ing and lake is bordered on one side
 with palm matched huts, each with it's
 pineapple garden and grove of orange
 trees; and on the other side the bush
 as it is called-an impenetrable jungle
 of dwarf casheW-nut trees, covered
 with creepers, aglow with scarlet, gold
 en and purple fiowers-stretches to the
 dark forest As you advance up the slope, the odor of pitch becomes more
 powerful and the vegetation poorer, till the whole earth, far IS you can see, looks like an asphalt pavement, hail oYergrown with weeds whose roots feed in the surface pools into which pedes-
 trians continually, ankle-deep, the wa
 ter being hidden under a film of brown 1 pitch dust. The lake does not lie in a
 depression as one would suppose, but at the top of the rise, where the ground slopes away from it on two sides. It | lldS dI al Se ul dbpul q IltiIbI O'' cSA >N'i
 and an undiscovered depth, which may
 go clear through to China on the other
 side of the globe, At any rate 1t has
 been continually mined for many years,
 by several companies, at the average rate of 50O,0OO tons of asphalt per an-
 mum; and it is just as high to-day as when the first digger began. At the
 first glance, it looks like any other woodland lake, containing water ln- stead of pitch. The borders are covered
 with tufts of grass, or rusbes, with
 heavier fringes of palms, and other trees in places; and in the middle are several wooded islands But the illus
 ion is immediately dispelled by the col
 or and consistency of this Stygian pool, whose black surface, glittering like pol ished ebony in the sun, is nearly every
 where strong enough to bear your
 weight-hard and cold on the edges,
 growing softer and hotter toward the
 center The whole surface is broken by
 innumerable cefts and Assures, where
 the pitch-which evidently oozes up
 from various centers-has failed to
 unite in one compact mass These f1ts- sures vary from few inches to seV- eral yards in extent and depth, and are filled with clear, fresh water, in which are small ugly~looking fish. You set out to walk across this mysterious lake, at first with more trepldation than swamped the Apostle; but gradually acquire confidence, as nothing uncanny happens. Some of the Assures you can easily jump across; others are bridged by blanks: and over the deeper and more dangerous ones you are carried bodily by the guides. By and by you reach the islands" and find them small, semi-fertile basis in a desert of pitch, as curious and unaccountabe IS any other part of the place. They are covered with thick, low shrub and deep sedge, and inhabited by myriads of penquins and other birds.
 Beyond the islands you come to the so-called "volcanos," which are merely billocks of pitch, two or three feet high, with small opening in the center from which oozes pitch in fluid state, to- gether with an evil odor of petroleum and sulphurated hydrogen combined, | which impels you to hurry on. All the Water-channels too, are covered with sulphuric foam, out of which bubb es of vile smelling gas arise. The water is always warm and at times, during the middle of the day attains temperature high IS TAO degrees F; yet the fish thrive and grow in it The clear warm pools are used for laundry purposes, and throughout the dry season people come to the pitch lake from long dis tances bringing their soled clothes in bundles on their heads.
 In places the pitch under foot is so soft thet your feet leave deep impress sions: and there is no doubt that if you stood long enough in che spot you would sink, slowly but surely knee deep waist deep, till horribly eugulfed Near the farther shore the whole surface is like light brown molasses much too soft to be walked upon. Slight explo- sions of gas continually taking place, followed by noxious vapors rising from the seething mass. accompanied by lit- .le trickling streams of pure water There is an oil well in the neighborhood md petroleum is found everywhere in his part of the island, The theory is hat the lake" is really the wide nouthed crater of an extinct mud vol ,ano. Borings show that it is funnel snapped, IiHH uepcSeu ldDstlUS lIpUl hin sheet at he rim to bottomless depth rear the middle. At depth Of two hundred feet, the farthest yet reached her is no preceptible change in the na ure of the material.
 The strangest thing about this strange place is the way some mys- erious power constantly forces asphalt O the surface. A local way asserts hat Dame Nature used a tuning fork 0 keep up the pitch The material is xcavated for shipment as if il were ice, ,red up with pick-aXes in patches per laps forty feet square and four deep eep. and then broken into pieces weighing twenty or thirty pounds Soon $ work ceases on one of these cXcava- ions il begins to oblterate itself, and within twenty-four hours after great it has been dug you could not tell "an unce had been taken out of if Think f it, Five hundred thousand of tons f pitch Is the average annual shipment rom this eXhaustless bed, and has been pr many years. Of course the lake is ,nglish property, but has been leased pr term of years to an American ompany which pays the British gov rnment 40 cents ton for the pitch, nd S1.20 a ton export duty. It costs mother dollar and a half a ton to get