In the latter it is employed for caulking the ships which navigate the lake.' {145} But the reader shall hear what the famous lake is like, and judge for himself.

Why not?
He may not be 'scientific,' but, as Professor Huxley well says, what is scientific thought but common sense well regulated?
Running down, then, by steamer, some thirty-six miles south from Port of Spain, along a flat mangrove shore, broken only at one spot by the conical hill of San Fernando, we arrived off a peninsula, whose flat top is somewhat higher than the lowland right and left.

The uplands are rich with primeval forest, and perhaps always have been.

The lower land, right and left, was, I believe, cultivated for sugar, till the disastrous epoch of 1846: but it is now furred over with rastrajo woods.
We ran, on our first visit, past the pitch point of La Brea, south- westward to Trois, where an industrial farm for convicts had been established by my host the Governor.

We were lifted on shore through a tumbling surf; and welcomed by an intelligent and courteous German gentleman, who showed us all that was to be seen; and what we saw was satisfactory enough.