s, some twenty
yards wide, were scattered about the middle of it. Beyond it rose a
noble forest of Moriche fan-palms; {149} and to the right of them
high wood with giant Mombins and undergrowth of Cocorite--a paradise
on the other side of the Stygian pool.

We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, and found it
perfectly hard. In a few yards we were stopped by a channel of
clear water, with tiny fish and water-beetles in it; and, looking
round, saw that the whole lake was intersected with channels, so
unlike anything which can be seen elsewhere, that it is not easy to
describe them.

Conceive a crowd of mushrooms, of all shapes, from ten to fifty feet
across, close together side by side, their tops being kept at
exactly the same level, their rounded rims squeezed tight against
each other; then conceive water poured on them so as to fill the
parting seams, and in the wet season, during which we visited it, to
overflow the tops somewhat. Thus would each mushroom represent,
tolerably well, one of the innumerable flat asphalt bosses, which
seem to have sprung up each from a separate centre, while the
parting seams would be of much the same shape as those in the
asphalt, broad and shallow atop, and rolling downward in a smooth
curve, till they are at bottom mere cracks, from two to ten feet
deep. Whether these cracks actually close up below, and the two
contiguous masses of pitch become one, cannot be seen. As far as
the eye goes down, they are two, though pressed close to each other.
Messrs. Wall and Sawkins explain the odd fact clearly and simply.
The oil, they say, which the asphalt contains when it rises first,
evaporates in the sun, of course most on the outside of the heap,
leaving a tough coat of asphalt, which has, generally, no power to
unite with the corresponding coat of the next mass. Meanwhile, Mr.
Manross, an American gentleman, who has written a very clever and
interesting account of the lake, {150} seems to have been so far
deceived by the curved and squeezed edges of these masses, that he
attributes to each of them a revolving motion, and supposes that the
material is continually passing from the centre to the edges, when
it 'rolls under,' and rises again in the middle. Certainly the
strange stuff looks, at the first glance, as if it were behaving in
this way; and certainly, also, his theory would explain the
appearance of sticks and logs in the pitch