Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/119

Rh And yet, the time is fast approaching when the now rising generation will wonder at the folly of having ever neglected such a means of salvation; for the mass of evidence on this subject which has recently accumulated has now compelled attention from the most skeptical, and the experiments so successfully carried out on the stormy coast of Aberdeenshire, at the harbor of Peterhead, have borne fruit far and near.

Some of the fishers who had witnessed them remembered them to good purpose when trying to enter the harbor at Stonehaven, and warned of their danger by the white-crested waves raging on the bar. They had with them only a little colza-oil and a little paraffine for their lamps (vegetable and mineral oils)—so little that most men would have deemed it mere folly to cast such upon tempestuous waves. But these men had profited by their lesson. One man stood on either bow, and, just as the boat approached the raging surf, they slowly poured out their offering to the waves, which, as if by magic, ceased to break, and rolled on in harmless green billows, which carried the boat safe into port. I have also just heard from Cornwall that a party of Cornish fishers who chanced to be at Aberdeen at the time of the experiments, and there witnessed the stilling of the waves, returned to their own granite-bound coast with the conviction that they had seen something which hereafter it may be well for them to practice.

Now, thanks to the same large-hearted and energetic Scotchman who planned and brought into practical working the oil-breakwater at Peterhead, the men of Kent can tell with wonder of its application to their own harbor of Folkestone, and are eye-witnesses of how quickly, on a very stormy day, a few gallons of oil have calmed the breaking waves, and made the harbor smooth and safe. The London papers, in reporting on these experiments, have stated the general belief that, by this simple use of oil, entrance and egress to Folkestone Harbor may henceforth be made absolutely secure in the severest storms.

In this relation, therefore, apart from all interests of the non-seagoing population, the question of the world's oil-supply assumes a new and enlarged interest. Here it would appear that Nature herself desires to illustrate the question in a most practical manner, and as the field of her demonstration she selects the Gulf of Mexico. About ten miles to the south of the Sabine River, which forms the boundary between Texas and Louisiana, and about a mile from the shore, there exists a natural phenomenon known to sailors as "The Oil-Spot." In fine weather there is nothing remarkable to attract the attention of a stranger; but when an angry gale from the northeast sweeps the ocean, and great crested waves rise in battle array, this charmed natural harbor reveals itself. No visible boundary divides it from the tempestuous ocean around; but, within a space two miles in length, the waters remain perfectly calm, their only change being that they become turbid and red, as though the oil-bearing mud were stirred up