of vegetable matter. I was accordingly particular in my inquiries with regard to the existence of beds of coal, but could not learn that there was any certain trace of that substance in the island, and though it may exist at a great depth, I saw no strata that indicate it. A friend indeed gave me specimens of a kind of bituminous shale mixed with sand, which he brought from Point Cedar about twenty miles distant, and I find Mr. Anderson speaks of the soil neat the Pitch-lake containing burnt cinders, but I imagine he may have taken for them the small fragments of the bitumen itself.
An examination of this tract of country could not fail, I think, to be highly gratifying to those who embrace the Huttonian theory of the earth, for they might behold the numerous branches of one of the largest rivers of the world (the Orinoco) bringing down so amazing a quantity of earthy particles as to discolour the sea in a most remarkable manner for many leagues distant,[1] they might see
- ↑ No scene can be more magnificent than that presented on a near approach to the north-western coast of Trinidad. The sea is not only changed from a light green to a deep brown colour, but has in an extraordinary degree, that rippling, confused and whirling motion, which arises from the violence of contending currents, and which prevail here in so remarkable a manner, particularly at those season when the Orinoco is swollen by periodical rains, that vessels are not infrequently several days or weeks in stemming them, or perhaps are irresistibly borne before them far out of their destined track. The dark verdure of lofty mountains, covered with impenetrable woods to the very summits, whence, in the most humid of climates, torrents imperiously rush through deep ravines to the sea; three narrow passages into the Gulph of Paria, between rugged mountains of brown micaceous schist, on whose cavernous sides the eddying surge dashes with fury, and where a vessel must necessarily be for some time embayed, with a depth of water scarcely to be fathomed by the lead, present altogether a scene which may well be conceived to have impressed the mind of the navigator who first beheld it with considerable surprise and awe. Columbus made this land in his third voyage, and gave it the name of the Bocas del Drago, From the wonderful discoloration and turbidity of the water, be sagaciously concluded that a very large river was near, and consequently a great continent.
