“All previous descriptions refer the bituminous matter scattered over the La Brea district, and especially that between the village and the lake, to streams which have issued at some former epoch from the lake, and extended into the sea.  This supposition is totally incorrect, as solidification would probably have ensued before it had proceeded one-tenth of the distance; and such of the asphalt as has undoubtedly escaped from the lake has not advanced more than a few yards, and always presents the curved surfaces already described, and never appears as an extended sheet.”

Agreeing with this statement as a whole, I nevertheless cannot but think it probable that a great deal of the asphalt, whether it be in large masses or in scattered veins, may be moving very slowly down hill, from the lake to the sea, by the process of expansion by day and contraction by night, and may be likened to a caterpillar, or rather caterpillars innumerable, progressing by expanding and contracting their rings, having strength enough to crawl down hill, but not strength enough to back up hill again.

At last we surmounted the last rise, and before us lay the famous lake—­not at the bottom of a depression, as we expected, but at the top of a rise, whence the ground slopes away from it on two sides, and rises from it very slightly on the two others.  The black pool glared and glittered in the sun.  A group of islands, some twenty yards wide, were scattered about the middle of it.  Beyond it rose a double forest of Moriche fan-palms; 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.

[Illustration:  THE PITCH LAKE.]

We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, and found it perfectly hard.  In a few steps 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