IV. Account of the Pitch Lake of the Island of Trinidad.
By Nicolas Nugent M.D. Honorary Member of the Geological Society.
Being desirous to visit the celebrated Lake of Pitch, previously to my departure from the Island of Trinidad, I embarked with that intention in the month of October, 1807, in a small vessel at Port Spain. After a pleasant sail of about thirty miles down the Gulph. of Paria, we arrived at the point la Braye, so called by the French from its characteristic feature. It is a considerable headland, about eighty feet above the level of the sea, and perhaps two miles long and two broad. We landed on the southern side of the point, at the plantation of Mr. Vessigny: as the boat drew near the shore, I was struck with the appearance of a rocky bluff or small promontory of a reddish brown colour, very different from the pitch which I had expected to find on the whole shore. Upon examining this spot, I found it composed of a substance corresponding to the porcelain jasper of mineralogists, generally of a red colour, where it had been exposed to the weather, but of light slate blue in the interior; it is a very hard stone with a conchoidal fracture, some degree of lustre, and is perfectly opake even at the edges; in some places, from the action of the air, it was of a reddish or yellowish brown, and an earthy appearance. I wished to have devoted more time to the investigation of what in the language of the Wernerian school is termed the geognostic relations of this spot, but my companions
