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Updated: June 3, 2025
Were it not for the great black python, that lies sleeping in the road in front of you, or the green iguana that hangs in a timboso tree over your head, or a naked runner pulling a rickshaw, you might think you were travelling the wide asphaltum streets of Washington. The home of the European in Singapore is peculiar to the country.
It became at the same time as black as ink; being, without doubt, mixed with the petroleum, or asphaltum, which abounds at the bottom of the sea, as well on the coasts of the gulf of Cariaco, as near the island of Trinidad.
They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye cannot bear to rest upon them. Impossible to pass M. Christofle without paying a moment's attention to him. And now we pass the asphaltum of the boulevard of boulevards that known as "the Italiens." This is the apple of the eye of Paris. "Now, my dears," says Sophonisba's mamma, "now we can really say that we are in Paris."
The sea was much disturbed, and new springs of asphaltum were formed, great cracks opened in the mountains, and the population fled all buildings and lived in the open air. On the sixth of December, in the same year, the arrival of Bouchard, "the pirate," gave them a new shock of terror.
The mass contains much more asphaltum, and after drying, which takes place soon, it leaves a far thicker layer upon the roof surface, while the pores, which had formed in the roofing paper consequent on drying, are better filled up. Nevertheless, the distilled tar also has retained the property of drying with time into a hard, vitreous mass, and ultimately to be destroyed by decomposition.
It is a sort of loose nodular limestone, which when wetted and rolled cements together and forms a road-surface smooth and compact as an asphaltum pavement, and of excellent wearing quality. It is a magnificent road to bicycle over; not only is it broad, level, and smooth, but for much of the way it is converted into a veritable avenue by spreading shade-trees on either side.
A pool known as "agua hedionda," "stinking water," had long suggested petroleum, and an American company known as the West Indies Petroleum Mining and Export Company undertook the development of the field. Oil was struck on November 14, 1904, the well spouting oil to a height of seventy feet and producing about 500 barrels per day. The grade of the oil was 22 Baume gravity with an asphaltum base.
Our mines now wrought are of gold, silver, quicksilver, copper and coal. Ores of tin, lead, and antimony in large veins, beds of sulphur, alum and asphaltum; lakes of borax and springs of sulphate of magnesia, are also found in the state, but they are not wrought at the present time, though they will probably all become valuable in a few years.
He also invented a submarine telegraph cable, which he laid and operated with perfect success, in 1843, from Coney Island and Fire Island to the city of New York, and from the Merchants Exchange to the mouth of the harbor. His insulating material consisted of a combination of cotton yarn with asphaltum and beeswax; the whole was inclosed in a lead pipe.
I mention these situations of asphaltum on account of the remarkable circumstances peculiar to them in these regions; for I am not unaware that naphtha, petroleum, and asphaltum are found equally in volcanic and secondary regions,* and even more frequently in the latter. Hot Springs of Irapa, at the north-eastern extremity of New Andalusia, between Rio Caribe, Soro, and Yaguarapayo.
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