Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1921-02-03

alter bitumen, fine silica ara COL
loidal clay. This colloidal clay is the
most wonderful part of the asphalt.
Ii is so fine, estimated at smaller than
.0O0l m. m, a micrcn, or On,0s2 81
inches in diameter, and so intimately
dispersed through the bitumen, tina,
it does not settle out, and cannot be
seen in solution even under a micro
scope. A special attachment called
the ultra microscope has to be used,
which reveals particles of sub-micro-
scope size. Looked at under this at
tachment the most wonderful clay
particles are never still, but are
always in an active state of motion,
darling from side to side with I'M
ceasing energy, with what is called BY
chemists the Brownman movement. 1t
is this colloidal clay, with its enormous
surface energy, that gives to the as
phalt its binding qualities and dur
ability, when used in a street pave
ment.
Imagine now a railroad running over
the wide expanse of asphalt. Yet that
is just what actually does occur. 1t is
q narrow gauge road and the tracks
are laid on ties made of bamboo wood.
1t has open cars on which are huge
buckets, or skips as they are called,
which are filled with the asphalt. The
cars are run by cable to a terminal sta
ton at one end of the lake. Because
Of the peculiar movement Of the as
phalt, the tracks are often thrown out
of alignment, and they have to be
Strengthened out before the cars can
run on them again.
The asphalt is dug out of the lake
with picks by native laborers, the ma
iority of whom are the regular type
of West Indian Negro. The asphalt
comes out in large Jumps like coal,
and the worker places one Of these
Jumps, weighing perhaps 30 to 40
pounds, upon his head, walks with it
to the railroad track, and throws it into
apparent effort.
One of the strange things about
this unique lake is that, when a hole is
dug in it one day, and the asphalt
taken out, by the next morning it is
filled up again. Within two or three
days no one would know that a hole
had been made there. This filling up
is caused by the settling of the entire
mass Of the asphalt, and not from
any influx of new materials, as was
once believed. The pitch lake, as the
asphalt deposit is called in Trinidad,
came into being after centuries of slow
formation-asphalt is not made IN a
day.
There has been taken from the lake,
during the fifty or more years it has
been worked, more than four million
tons of asphalt, and there appears to
be still an inexhaustible supply, as
figured by the biologists, perhaps over
billion tons. In all the time of ex-
cavation the lake has settled only some
fifteen feet from its original level.
When the skips of loaded asphalt
reach the terminal station they are
dumped into other skips, which are
conveyed by an aerial cable to the
shore, along great steel pier, extend
ing quarter of mile out in the
ocean, where a steamship lies waiting
to be loaded. Go out along the mar
row boardwalk, climb up winding
stairway, and you come to a platform
perhaps forty feet above the water The
conveyor cable is guided by pulleys
around the end of the pier. AS each
bucket comes along, clutch is thrown
of, couple Of Negroes tip it up, and
the asphalt goes tumbling through a
hole in the platform, down a chute in
to the hold of the ship.
Then another strange phenomenon
takes place. The asphalt, after it has
been in the hold a while, fuses to-
gether again into solid mass, Just as
it was in the lake itself During the
voyage it becomes quite hard, and when
its destination is reached, it has to be
again dug out with picks, in the same
manner as it was originally won from
the pitch lake, many thousands OF
miles away.