giving out bitumen, and bubbles of carbonic acid and carburetted hydrogen.  The mud-volcano of Saman, in the Western Caucasus, gives off, with a continual stream of thick mud, ignited gases, accompanied with mimic earthquakes like those of the Trinidad Salses; and this out of a soil said to be full of bituminous springs, and where (as in Trinidad) the tertiary strata carry veins of asphalt, or are saturated with naphtha.  At the famous sacred Fire wells of Baku, in the Eastern Caucasus, the ejections of mud and inflammable gas are so mixed with asphaltic products that Eichwald says ’they should be rather called naphtha volcanoes than mud-volcanoes, as the eruptions always terminate in a large emission of naphtha.’

It is reasonable enough, then, to suppose a similar connection in Trinidad.  But whence come, either in Trinidad or at Turbaco, the sea-salts and the iodine?  Certainly not from the sea itself, which is distant, in the case of the Trinidad Salses, from two to seventeen miles.  It must exist already in the strata below.  And the ejected pebbles, which are evidently sea-worn, must form part of a tertiary sea-beach, covered by sands, and covering, perhaps, in its turn, vegetable debris which, as it is converted into asphalt, thrusts the pebbles up to the surface.

We had to hurry away from the strange place; for night was falling fast, or rather ready to fall, as always here, in a moment, without twilight, and we were scarce out of the forest before it was dark.  The wild game were already moving, and a deer crossed our line of march, close before one of the horses.  However, we were not benighted; for the sun was hardly down ere the moon rose, bright and full; and we floundered home through the mud, to start again next morning into mud again.  Through rich rolling land covered with cane; past large sugar-works, where crop-time and all its bustle was just beginning; along a tramway, which made an excellent horse-road, and then along one of the new roads, which are opening up the yet untouched riches of this island.  In this district alone, thirty-six miles of good road and thirty bridges have been made, where formerly there were only two abominable bridle-paths.  It was a solid pleasure to see good engineering round the hillsides; gullies, which but a year or two before were break-neck scrambles into fords often impassable after all, bridged with baulks of incorruptible timber, on piers sunk, to give a hold in that sea of hasty pudding, sixteen feet below the river-bed; and side supports sunk as far into the banks; a solid pleasure to congratulate the warden (who had joined us) on his triumphs, and to hear how he had sought for miles around in the hasty-pudding sea, ere he could find either gravel or stone for road metal, and had found it after all; or how in places, finding no stone at all, he had been forced to metal the way with burnt clay, which, as I can testify, is an excellent substitute; or how again he had coaxed and patted the too-comfortable natives into being well paid for doing the very road-making which, if they had any notion of their own interests, they would combine to do for themselves.  And so we rode on chatting,