Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/127

Rh of refined oil fell from forty-five to thirty-two cents. Very soon this was further reduced to nine cents for crude oil and nineteen for refined! Already this precious "earth-oil" asserted its privilege of being a special boon to the poor.

Of course, this news spread like wild-fire, and from far and near men came crowding to the wonderful oil-yielding region, and the land was riddled with borings varying from six hundred to sixteen hundred feet in depth, of which it was estimated that not more than one in six yielded profitable returns. Nevertheless, two years after Colonel Drake had sunk his first shaft, the oil-yield had increased to upward of two million barrels, and in the following year it reached three million! As the yield of some wells decreased, new ones were struck in other isolated spots.

Of course, fire is the danger most to be dreaded by all oil-communities. Nowhere, unless in a powder-magazine, does the chance spark carry with it such probability of doing mischief as in this gas-laden atmosphere, where everything seems to be inflammable. Sometimes through grievous negligence, but more often by the action of lightning, a tank containing perhaps three or four thousand barrels of oil is struck, and then all efforts to extinguish the flames are known to be futile—the owners can only stand afar off and watch this magnificent bonfire, which must blaze on till it has utterly consumed all that feeds it. Sometimes the gas escaping from a flowing well ignites while the oil-jet is in full play, and then grand indeed, but most awful, is the spectacle of that genuine "fire-fountain"—a column of living fire tossed far above the dark tree-tops, and falling in a beautiful but scathing rain, with a roar more deafening even than that of its ordinary condition.

Nor do the dread possibilities of fire as connected with the petroleum-trade end here. In all the pages of marine disaster, none are more terrible than those which record how on several occasions (sometimes when in harbor in the midst of crowded shipping) vessels laden with petroleum have taken fire, and their cargo has overspread the sea in a film of inextinguishable floating fire, carrying death and destruction wheresoever it penetrated. This, I think, brings us to the climax of possible horrors in connection with this subject.

The "earth-oil" is found in various parts of North America; but Pennsylvania is said to yield about seven times as much as all the others collectively. Canada has springs of her own to the north of Lake Ontario; but the great petroleum-region of the States lies partly in New York, but chiefly in Pennsylvania near the shores of Lake Erie. The oil-bearing sandstone underlies a tract of heavily timbered hill-country watered by the Alleghany River. Here the principal oil-springs have been struck in isolated patches, dotting a belt of territory which is roughly estimated at about one hundred and fifty miles in length by about thirty in maximum breadth, covering an area of less than