PETROLEUM. 141 



occurred in the report of the commander of Fort Duquesne, 1750, 

 when he witnessed the ceremonies of the Seneca Indians on Oil 

 Creek. A prominent feature of the ceremonies was the burning of 

 the oil as it oozed from the ground. 



The oil-spring of Cuba, Alleghany County, New York, called the 

 Seneca Oil-Spring, was described by Prof. Silliman, in 1833, as a dirty 

 pool, about eighteen feet in diameter, covered with a film of oil, which 

 was skimmed off from time to time for medicinal purposes. The so- 

 called Seneca-oil was not from this spring, but from Oil Creek. Hil- 

 dreth,in 1833, gave an account of the salt-wells of the Little Kanawha 

 Valley, West Virginia, which he says yielded a little oil. In 1840 a 

 well at Burkesville, Kentucky, was described as spouting oil at the 

 estimated rate of seventy-five gallons a minute for a few days, but it 

 then failed entirely (Dana, " Mineralogy," fifth edition, 1869). In 

 1844 Mr. Murray mentioned the petroleum of Enniskillen, Canada. 



About twenty years ago the manufacture of oil from coal and 

 bituminous shales, having been widely extended through the labors 

 of Abraham Gesner and James Young, of Glasgow, began to excite 

 interest in this couutry, and, according to S. D. Hayes, the first coal- 

 oil offered for sale in this country was made by Philbrick & Atwood, 

 in 1852, at the works of the United States Chemical Manufacturing 

 Company, Walthara, Massachusetts. It was called coup-oil, after the 

 recent coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon, and was used as a lubricator. 



In 1856 the first illuminating oil was made by Mr. Joshua Merrill, 

 from Trinidad bitumen, according to the same authority. According 

 to H. E. Wrigley, however, a refinery was started as early as 1850 

 by Mr. Samuel Kier, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, for the treatment 

 of crude petroleum (" Report on Petroleum of Pennsylvania " for the 

 "Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, 1874"). Success being 

 limited only by the small amount available, search for the oil was 

 naturally directed to Oil Creek, and in 1858 Messrs. J. G. Eveleth 

 and George H. Bissell, of New York City, leased one hundred acres 

 of land near Titusville, on the northern border of Venango County, 

 Pennsylvania, and engaged Colonel E. L. Drake, of New Haven, 

 Connecticut, to bore a well. On the 28th of August, 1859, he struck 

 oil at a depth of seventy-one feet (according to some authorities 

 sixty-nine and a half feet), and a pump was adjusted which produced 

 twenty-five barrels a day. 



In 1861 the first flowing well was struck by Mr. Funk, on the 

 M'Elhenny Farm, Oil Creek, at a depth of 400 feet. Soon after two 

 more wells were sunk (the Phillips and Empire), flowing 3,000 bar- 

 rels each daily. Since 1858, in round numbers, 10,500 wells have been 

 bored in Pennsylvania, and oil-wells also exist in West Virginia, 

 Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere, with results that will be stated here- 

 after. 



It would not be proper to leave the history of petroleum without 



