ad the pales of Paradise been just smeared
with bad coal-tar? Not exactly: but across the path crept,
festering in the sun, a black runnel of petroleum and water; and
twenty yards to our left stood, under a fast-crumbling trunk, what
was a year or two ago a little engine-house. Now roof, beams,
machinery, were all tumbled and tangled in hideous and somewhat
dangerous ruin, over a shaft, in the midst of which a rusty pump-
cylinder gurgled, and clicked, and bubbled, and spued, with black
oil and nasty gas; a foul ulcer in Dame Nature's side, which happily
was healing fast beneath the tropic rain and sun. The creepers were
climbing over it, the earth crumbling into it, and in a few years
more the whole would be engulfed in forest, and the oil-spring, it
is to be hoped, choked up with mud.

This is the remnant of one of the many rash speculations connected
with the Pitch Lake. At a depth of some two hundred and fifty feet
'oil was struck,' as the American saying is. But (so we were told)
it would not rise in the boring, and had to be pumped up. It could
not, therefore, compete in price with the Pennsylvanian oil, which,
when tapped, springs out of the ground of itself, to a height
sometimes of many feet, under the pressure of the superincumbent
rocks, yielding enormous profits, and turning needy adventurers into
millionaires, though full half of the oil is sometimes wasted for
the want of means to secure it.

We passed the doleful spot with a double regret--for the nook of
Paradise which had been defiled, and for the good money which had
been wasted: but with a hearty hope, too, that, whatever natural
beauty may be spoilt thereby, the wealth of these asphalt deposits
may at last be utilised. Whether it be good that a few dozen men
should 'make their fortunes' thereby, depends on what use the said
men make of the said 'fortunes'; and certainly it will not be good
for them if they believe, as too many do, that their dollars, and
not their characters, constitute their fortunes. But it is good,
and must be, that these treasures of heat and light should not
remain for ever locked up and idle in the wilderness; and we wished
all success to the enterprising American who had just completed a
bargain with the Government for a large supply of asphalt, which he
hoped by his chemical knowledge to turn to some profitable use.

Another turn brought us into a fresh nook of Paradise; and this