Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/79

specific gravity, with little or no lustre, resembling particular kinds of coal, and so hard as to require a severe blow of the hammer to detach or break it; in other parts, it is so much softer, as to allow one to cut out a piece in any form with a spade or hatchet, and in the interior is vesicular and oily; this is the character of by far the greater portion of the whole mass; in one place, it bubbles up in a perfectly fluid state, so that you may take it up in a cup, and I am informed that in one of the neighbouring plantations there is a spot where it is of a bright colour, shining, transparent, and brittle, like bottle glass or resin. The odour in all these instances is strong and like that of a combination of pitch and sulphur. No sulphur however is any where to be perceived, but from the strong exhalation of that substance and the affinity which is known to exist between the fluid bitumens and it, much is, no doubt, contained in a state of combination; a bit of the pitch held in the candle melts like sealing wax and burns with a light flame which is extinguished whenever it is removed, and on cooling the bitumen hardens again. From this property it is sufficiently evident that this substance may be converted to many useful purposes, and accordingly it is universally used in the country wherever pitch is required; and the reports of the naval officers who have tried it are favourable to its more general adoption; it is requisite merely to prepare it with a proportion of oil, tallow, or common tar, to give it a sufficient degree of fluidity. In this point of view, this lake is of vast national importance, and more especially to a great maritime power. It is indeed singular that the attention of government should not have been more forcibly directed to a subject of such magnitude: the attempts that have hitherto been made to render it extensively useful have for the most part been only feeble and injudicious, and have consequently proved abortive. This vast collection of bitumen