that the fresh pitch oozes out at
the lines of least resistance, namely, in the channels between the
older and more hardened masses, usually at the upper ends of them;
so that one may stand on pitch comparatively hard, and put one's
hand into pitch quite liquid, which is flowing softly out, like some
ugly fungoid growth, such as may be seen in old wine-cellars, into
the water. One such pitch-fungus had grown several yards in length
in the three weeks between our first and second visit; and on
another, some of our party performed exactly the same feat as Mr.
Manross--

'In one of the star-shaped pools of water, some five feet deep, a
column of pitch had been forced perpendicularly up from the bottom.
On reaching the surface of the water it had formed a sort of centre
table, about four feet in diameter, but without touching the sides
of the pool. The stem was about a foot in diameter. I leaped out
on this table, and found that it not only sustained my weight, but
that the elasticity of the stem enabled me to rock it from side to
side. Pieces torn from the edges of this table sank readily,
showing that it had been raised by pressure, and not by its
buoyancy.'

True, though strange: but stranger still did it seem to us, when we
did at last what the Negroes asked us, and dipped our hands into the
liquid pitch, to find that it did not soil the fingers. The old
proverb, that one cannot touch pitch without being defiled, happily
does not stand true here, or the place would be intolerably
loathsome. It can be scraped up, moulded into any shape you will;
wound in a string (as was done by one of the midshipmen) round a
stick, and carried off: but nothing is left on the hand save clean
gray mud and water. It may be kneaded for an hour before the mud be
sufficiently driven out of it to make it sticky. This very
abundance of earthy matter it is which, while it keeps the pitch
from soiling, makes it far less valuable than it would be were it
pure.

It is easy to understand whence this earthy matter (twenty or thirty
per cent) comes. Throughout the neighbourhood the ground is full,
to the depth of hundreds of feet, of coaly and asphaltic matter.
Layers of sandstone or of shale containing this decayed vegetable,
alternate with layers which contain none. And if, as seems
probable, the coaly matter is continually changing into asphalt and
oil, and then working its way upward through e