nto the
material." This is a statement which we verified again and again, as
we did the one which follows, namely, that the hollow bubbles which
abound on the surface of the pitch "generally contain traces of the
lighter portion of vegetation," and "are manifestly derived from
leaves, etc., which are blown about the lake by the wind, and are
covered with asphalt, and, as they become asphalt themselves, give off
gases which form bubbles round them."

But how is it that those logs stand up out of the asphalt, with
asphalt caps and hounds' ears (as Mr. Manross well phrases it) on the
tops of them?

We pushed on across the lake, over the planks which the negroes laid
down from island to island. Some, meanwhile, preferred a steeple-chase
with water-jumps, after the fashion of the midshipmen on a certain
second visit to the lake. How the negroes grinned delight and surprise
at the vagaries of English lads--a species of animal altogether new to
them; and how they grinned still more when certain staid and portly
dignitaries caught the infection, and proved by more than one good
leap that they too had been English school-boys--alas! long, long ago.

So, whether by bridging, leaping, or wading, we arrived at the little
islands, and found them covered with a thick, low scrub; deep sedge,
and among them Pinguins, like huge pine-apples without the apple; gray
wild-pines, parasites on Matapalos, which, of course, have established
themselves, like robbers and vagrants as they are, everywhere; a true
holly, with box-like leaves; and a rare cocoa-plum, very like the
holly in habit, which seems to be all but confined to these little
patches of red earth, afloat on the pitch. Out of the scrub, when we
were there, flew off two or three night-jars, very like our English
species, save that they had white in the wings; and on the second
visit one of the midshipmen, true to the English boy's bird's-nesting
instinct, found one of their eggs, white-spotted, in a grass nest.

Passing these little islands, which are said (I know not how truly) to
change their places and number, we came to the very fountains of Styx,
to that part of the lake where the asphalt is still oozing up.

As the wind set toward us, we soon became aware of an evil
smell--petroleum and sulphureted hydrogen at once--which gave some of
us a headache. The pitch here is yellow and white with sulphur foam;
so are the water-channels; and out of both water and pitch innumerable