the Crown. Asphalt is less than a
twentieth part of the value of the exports of the island, so, you see,
Trinidad would have been rich without that. Indirectly, of course, the
Pitch Lake has been the means of attracting attention to the island,
especially in earlier times. The facts that Trinidad is out of the
hurricane track and off the earthquake belt have had a good deal to do
with its prosperity, too, you know. My friend Cecil always declares that
Trinidad and Jamaica together, the two richest of the West Indian
islands, ought to run the whole cluster of Caribbean islands, just as
little England runs the whole British Empire."

"Who was it said that?" asked Stuart curiously, though his heart was
thumping with excitement.

"A chap I know, Cecil, Guy Cecil, sort of a globe-trotter. One of the
biggest shareholders in this Pitch Lake. Funny sort of Johnny. Know
him?"

"I--I think I've met him," answered the boy. "Tall, eyes a very light
blue, almost colorless, speaks very correct English, fussy about his
clothes and doesn't talk about himself much."

"That's the very man!" cried the planter, "I couldn't have described him
better myself. Where did you meet him?"

Stuart answered non-committally and steered the subject into other
channels, determining within himself that he would certainly go out to
the Pitch Lake, if only with the hope of finding out something more
about this mysterious Guy Cecil, whose name seemed to be cropping up
everywhere.

The following day, having seen his friend the planter off on the
homeward bound mail steamer, Stuart prepared for his visit to the famous
Pitch Lake, though the planter had warned him that he would be
disappointed.

Going by railway to Fernando, Stuart took a small steamer to La Brea,
the shipping point for the asphalt, a town, which, by reason of its
association with pitch, has a strange and unnatural air. The beach is
covered with pieces of pitch, encrusted with sand and stones, worn by
the water into the most grotesque shapes and forming so many
resting-places for hundreds of pelicans. Some of these blocks of
hardened asphalt had been polished by the sea until they shone like
jewels of jet as large as a table, others, fringed with green seaweed,
gave the shore an uncanny appearance of a sea-beach not of this earth.
Unlike the universally white towns of the West Indies, La Brea is black.
The impress of pitch is everywhere. The pier is caked with the pitch,
the pavemen