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Updated: June 3, 2025
By virtue of their rough surfaces, any leakage in such vessels was instantly stopped by a daubing of pitch or mineral asphaltum, coated externally with sand or coarse clay to harden it and overcome its adhesiveness.
The roofing paper prepared with distilled tar is perhaps most suitably called asphaltum paper, as this has been used in its manufacture.
The dwelling was a hundred feet long, and the roof was rendered impenetrable to rain, being covered with a thick coating of asphaltum, mingled with sand. There was a spring of this valuable pitchy substance near the village; and the roofs of all the houses in Los Angelos were similarly covered. A huge brass knocker was attached to the door.
The smell of its streets had a lure for him which no other city's streets had. His crowd was there the folk who spoke his tongue and played his game. And there the gudgeons on which his sort fed schooled the thickest and carried the most savory fat on their bones as they skittered over the asphaltum shoals of the Main Stem.
When dry, the object should be suspended under a glass shade and exposed to a stream of sulphuretted hydrogen gas; or it may be immersed in a solution of 1 part of phosphorus in 15 parts of bisulphide of carbon, 1 part of bees-wax, 1 part of spirits of turpentine, 1 part of asphaltum, and 1/8 part of caoutchouc dissolved in bisulphide of carbon.
We shall begin with the most eastern extremity, the island of Trinidad; which seems rather to belong to the shore of the continent than to the system of the mountains of the West India Islands. The pit which throws up asphaltum in the bay of Mayaro, on the eastern coast of the island of Trinidad, southward of Point Guataro. This is the mine of chapapote or mineral tar of the country.
These have been specially condemned in England, as no matter how good the non-conducting substance and many are so only in name it will become rubbed off at some points, and there the bottom will be eaten both by salt water and action of copper. Coal tar and asphaltum are the subjects of patents in various forms.
Perhaps the most interesting stone implement which was found was uncovered in the excavation of one of the middle rooms of the western part of the ruin, about three feet below the surface. It consists of a wooden handle rounded at each end and slightly curved, with a sharpened stone inserted midway of its length and cemented to the wood with pitch or asphaltum.
The great mistake in Fra Bartolommeo's system was the preparing his paintings like cartoons, and using asphaltum or lamp-black for outlines and shadows; this in process of time destroys the super-colour, and gives a general blackness to the painting. The same kind of talk went on here as in modern studios.
So anxious was he to get the most brilliant effects of colours that he mixed his paints with asphaltum, egg, varnish, wax, and the like, till one artist said: "The wonder is that the picture did not crack beneath the brush." Many of these great pictures did go to pieces because of the chances Sir Joshua took in mixing things that did not belong together, in order to make wonderful results.
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