In the name “Trinidad” is embodied all the romance and beauty and wonder of a tropical island. In the native language it is called Iere, “the land of the humming bird.” Quite in accordance with the luxurious abundance of life and color is the asphalt lake, the marvel of centuries. Its causation astonishing, its features gigantic, it lies in the heart of a romantic land—a subject of speculation among scientists, but a tropical enchantment to those of more fanciful mind.

The Island of Trinidad lies about 700 miles north of the Equator and 2000 miles from New York. Its area of 1755 square miles is less than that of the State of Delaware. It belongs to Great Britain and is separated from its nearest neighbor, Venezuela, by the wonderful Gulf of Paria and its narrow straits or bocas which connect the gulf with the ocean.

This majestic gateway has seen the coming and going of many famous mariners. Through it Columbus sailed north on his third voyage in midsummer of the year 1498. Sir Walter Raleigh and many buccaneers swept through the bocas in the days when English seamen performed deeds of valor against the Spaniards, and any galleon was their lawful prey. Here, too, cruised Nelson with his great English fleet, hunting for the French warships on that half world chase that ended at Trafalgar. To-day important trade centers in Trinidad, and the harbor of Port of Spain, the only city of size, is busy with the arrival and departure of steamships bearing to Europe and America the tropical riches of the Island.

In Trinidad the thermometer records 85 degrees almost every day and never changes more than twenty degrees. The only difference between one season of the year and another, is that for a few months it rains. Even in the rainy season, however, and nearly every day, there is an abundance of bright sunshine. There are fine shops, large warehouses filled with chocolate beans, sugar and other tropical products; and one can ride on trolley cars made in Philadelphia. The most popular hotel faces the great Savannah, a wide stretch of lawn bordered by trees. There are beautiful drives to the Reservoir; up the mountains to Maracas Waterfall with vista of the Caribbean a thousand feet below; through avenues of giant bamboos arching over the roadway, and through miles of plantations of cacao.

Railway lines run east from Port of Spain, and south for thirty-five miles, down the coast of the Gulf of Paria, to Prince’s Town and San Fernando, through sections crowded with East Indian coolies. From San Fernando, a little steamer leaves daily for trips along the coast. The land-locked waters of the Gulf are usually calm and the mountains of Venezuela are seen miles away in an exquisite blue haze. The steamer skirts along a shore bordered by mangrove swamps, to Brighton, and there it stops at the long pier of The Trinidad Lake Asphalt Operating Company, Ltd.

Brighton is an active little industrial community, close upon the lake, and the traveler finds himself in the midst of the asphalt industry. Overhead the cable is singing away as it carries along the myriad of great buckets filled with asphalt. Dozens of pretty buildings are the homes of the Company’s employees. White paint and screens and cleanliness are everywhere.

The asphalt refinery is at the hilltop, on the border of the lake, which has been described by some as an inferno, a place of heat and vapors. In reality it is a great level area of about 100 acres, with a surface of a dull blue-gray color, with here and there stray pools of water from the showers.

You may walk where you please on the asphalt. It is solid enough to bear your weight. But if you stand in one place you will slowly sink in. The surface bears some resemblance to an asphalt street on a very hot day, though much of the time a fresh breeze blows.

A narrow gauge railroad runs from the refinery out upon and halfway across the lake. Then it swings back in a great loop to the shore. Little cars run on the tracks drawn by a wire cable guided by rollers between the rails. Here and there, near the line, you may see workmen digging asphalt and loading trains of cars. When these are filled they are drawn around the loop to the refinery; or to the pier where asphalt in its crude form is shipped to the United States and to nearly every other civilized country in the world.

The loaded cars are halted under a conveyor cable. Very rapidly the hooks which swing from the cable are thrown into place, and the big bucket is lifted from the truck and goes off down the hill. The carriers are clamped to the moving cable, all the buckets moving along at the same rate of speed. The weight of those going down helps to pull the empties back again, so that not very much power is needed to keep the cable moving.

Most of the cars, however, are stopped at the refinery, which is at the edge of the lake, close to the power house and the shops. Refining Trinidad asphalt consists mainly of driving off twenty-nine per cent. of contained water. The crude asphalt is dumped into large tanks heated by coils of steam pipes. The asphalt softens and boils, evaporating the water completely. The melted asphalt is drawn into barrels, in which it is shipped away. This refined Trinidad Lake Asphalt contains all of the constituents of the crude asphalt that are valuable from the chemical or commercial viewpoint.

Digging the asphalt is a simple operation. A mattock is the only tool required, and under its blows the asphalt breaks readily. The negroes employed in digging are skilled in the work, and break out lumps that would be far too heavy for an untrained laborer to carry. An astonishingly small amount of the material is broken into pieces. A laborer simply lifts one or two lumps, raises them up on his head, walks a few yards, and drops them in the car. The crude asphalt as broken out is brownish, usually quite wet with surface water, and filled with cavities made by gas up to an inch or more in diameter.

The gangs of barefooted workmen in a place number thirty, of whom half a dozen do the digging on a space perhaps sixty feet long and forty wide, and in the course of a day dig to a depth of about three feet. That same spot the next morning may look a little rough but will be approximately level with the level of the lake. The hole fills up, and in the course of a week all traces of the digging are obliterated, which does not mean necessarily that fresh asphalt has come into the lake from below. On the contrary, the excavations are filled by a slow settling or leveling of the surface asphalt. Near the middle of the area the material is softer, and in a few places it may be seen in small irregular patches oozing up from below, and of the consistency of putty.

The Lake is solid asphalt, perhaps two hundred feet deep at its lowest point. Borings show that in consistency the asphalt is practically the same throughout. There is evidence that the mass contained in the lake is in constant but very slow motion. The surface is a series of folds, between which rain water gathers in the creases. Sir Frederick Treves compared the surface of the asphalt to the skin of a huge elephant, and the irregular creases to the folds in his hide. Along the edges of the pools of water, grass and bushes find a footing, forming green islands of no great area.

The railroad which carries the asphalt to the refinery is necessarily a light affair, for the reason that it is frequently moved from place to place, as mining work is shifted. It is remarkable, however, how the asphalt supports the ties and rails, especially when it is remembered that the loaded cars often passing in a continuous line over the rails, must weigh no less than 1000 pounds each. A solid lake may seem a misnomer, but no other phrase better describes the Trinidad deposit or the somewhat similar but much larger Bermudez asphalt lake in Venezuela.

Close to the Lake’s edge the asphalt is drier, and along the shore of the lake here and there are “pitch cones,” like miniature volcanoes, and composed of asphalt that does not flow, but which was evidently once semi-liquid. Similar “pitch cones” are to be found here and there about the neighborhood, and are in places along the edge of the Gulf of Paria.

A quarter of a mile from shore a steamship lies at the end of the pier, loading crude asphalt. Go out on the narrow boardwalk, climb up the winding stairway, and you come on a platform forty feet above the water. The conveyor cable is guided by pulleys around the end of the pier. As each bucket comes along a clutch is thrown off, the bucket is tipped and the asphalt falls down a chute into the hold of the ship.

The origin of asphalt has been a subject of much discussion in the past, and recent developments in the region of the lake enable one at last to make a definite statement on the subject. Strata of clays and shales that extend from east to west in southern Trinidad, carry asphaltic oil in liquid form. Many wells have been drilled in recent years and quantities of this maltha won. The asphalt lake fills a natural depression into which asphaltic petroleum from one of these strata found its way ages ago.

A geologist might say that the origin of the deposit of asphalt is recent, but in saying that he might mean that not more than a few thousand years had gone since its occurrence. The asphaltic petroleum came from the depths, after which such parts of the substance as were light and gaseous volatilized, the heavy base remaining.

For practical purposes the asphalt is a perfect commodity for the uses to which it is applied. The amount in the lake has not been calculated with any certainty, but there is unquestionably enough to supply the needs of the whole world for a very long time.

The first modern Trinidad Lake asphalt pavement was laid in the United States. Since then it has been used on show streets of the world, including Fifth Avenue, New York; Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C.; Michigan Avenue Boulevard, Chicago; Broad Street, Philadelphia; Victoria-Thames Embankment, London, England, and countless other streets in the United States, South America, Australia, Egypt, India and Japan. One very frequently now sees motor trucks hauling mixtures of this black material. Almost everybody has seen it dumped smoking hot on the street, paused to watch the men raking it out carefully and the rollers compressing it into a smooth pavement. As laid it contains 10% of asphalt and the rest is sand and stone-dust.

Nevertheless, the asphalt has such cementitious qualities that it solidifies the materials into a sheet as hard as rock.

After asphalt was first used for street paving, other uses were discovered for it. For example, it is now used in the manufacture of asphalt shingles and roll roofings. Asphalt is waterproof and at the same time so tough and durable that it is peculiarly suited for that purpose. These qualities combined with its low price have no doubt been mainly responsible for its phenomenal success and popularity among builders and home owners.

The earlier forms of roll roofing were supplemented very soon by more elaborate styles coated with granulated slate in different colors and cut into shingles in a wide variety of sizes and patterns.

Hundreds of tons of native lake asphalt are used annually in the construction of built-up roofs and asphalt mastic floors for large office buildings and industrial plants. A large amount of asphalt is also used in the waterproofing of large engineering projects, such as tunnels, bridge structures, dams and reservoirs.

Duplicate copies of this Booklet may be obtained free of charge from The Barber Asphalt Company, Philadelphia, Pa.

Cable Address—
Baspaco, Philadelphia

ELEVENTH EDITION
3-27

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