We scrambled back into the boat—­had, of course, a heap of fruit, bananas, oranges, pine-apples, tossed in after us—­and ran back again in the steamer to the famous La Brea.

As we neared the shore, we perceived that the beach was black as pitch; and the breeze being off the land, the asphalt smell (not unpleasant) came off to welcome us.  We rowed in, and saw in front of a little row of wooden houses a tall mulatto, in blue policeman’s dress, gesticulating and shouting to us.  He was the ward-policeman, and I found him (as I did all the coloured police) able and courteous, shrewd and trusty.  These police are excellent specimens of what can be made of the Negro, or half-Negro, if he be but first drilled, and then given a responsibility which calls out his self-respect.  He was warning our crew not to run aground on one or other of the pitch reefs, which here take the place of rocks.  A large one, a hundred yards off on the left, has been almost all dug away, and carried to New York or to Paris to make asphalt pavement.  The boat was run ashore, under his directions, on a spit of sand between the pitch; and when she ceased bumping up and down in the muddy surf, we scrambled out into a world exactly the hue of its inhabitants—­of every shade, from jet-black to copper-brown.  The pebbles on the shore were pitch.  A tide-pool close by was enclosed in pitch:  a four-eyes was swimming about in it, staring up at us; and when we hunted him, tried to escape, not by diving, but by jumping on shore on the pitch, and scrambling off between our legs.  While the policeman, after profoundest courtesies, was gone to get a mule cart to take us up to the lake, and planks to bridge its water-channels, we took a look round at this oddest of corners of the earth.

In front of us was the unit of civilisation—­the police-station, wooden, on wooden stilts (as all well-built houses are here), to ensure a draught of air beneath them.  We were, of course, asked to come in and sit down, but preferred looking about, under our umbrellas; for the heat was intense.  The soil is half pitch, half brown earth, among which the pitch sweals in and out, as tallow sweals from a candle.  It is always in slow motion under the heat of the tropic sun:  and no wonder if some of the cottages have sunk right and left in such a treacherous foundation.  A stone or brick house could not stand here:  but wood and palm-thatch are both light and tough enough to be safe, let the ground give way as it will.

The soil, however, is very rich.  The pitch certainly does not injure vegetation, though plants will not grow actually in it.  The first plants which caught our eyes were pine-apples; for which La Brea is famous.  The heat of the soil, as well as of the air, brings them to special perfection.  They grow about anywhere, unprotected by hedge or fence; for the Negroes here seem honest enough, at least towards each other.  And at the corner of the house was a bush worth looking at, for we had heard of it for many a year.  It bore prickly, heart-shaped pods an inch long, filled with seeds coated with a red waxy pulp.