THE OIL- SUPPLY OF THE WORLD. 109 



And yet, the time is fast approacliing when the now rising genera- 

 tion 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 col^a-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-sea- 

 going population, the question of the world's oil-supply assumes a new 

 and enlarged interest. Here it would appear that Nature herself de- 

 sires 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 be- 

 tween 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 natu- 

 ral harbor reveals itself. No visible boundary divides it from the tem- 

 pestuous ocean around ; but, within a space two miles in length, the 

 icaters remain perfectly calm,, their only change being that they be- 

 come turbid and red, as though the oil-bearing mud were stirred up 



