OIL SPRINGS. 71 



which are of considerable depth and width, are inhabited by 

 shoals of eyeless fish, the organs of sight being superfluous in 

 a region doomed to eternal night. The atmosphere of this 

 huge cave is peculiarly dry, and is supposed to be extremely 

 serviceable to persons afflicted with pulmonary complaints. 



To visit any considerable portion of the cavern would 

 occupy us at least a couple of days. It is calculated there 

 are no less than two hundred and twenty-six avenues, forty- 

 seven domes, numerous rivers, eight cataracts, and twenty- 

 three pits, many of which are grand in the extreme. Some 

 of the rivers are navigated by boats, and, as may be supposed, 

 they have obtained appropriate names. Here we find the 

 Dead Sea and the River Styx. One of the streams disappears 

 beneath the ground, and then rises again in another portion 

 of the cavern. But after all, as naturalists, the little eyeless 

 fish should chiefly claim our attention. 



OIL SPRINGS. 



As coal was stored up for the use of man, formed in ages 

 past from the giant vegetation which then covered the face of 

 the earth, so the Creator has caused to be deposited in sub- 

 terranean caverns large quantities of valuable oil, which not 

 only serves man for light, but is useful to him for many other 

 purposes. 



Whether that oil was produced from animal or vegetable 

 substances, appears, even now, a matter of dispute. Some 

 naturalists suppose that vast numbers of oil-giving creatures 

 had been assembled in the districts in which these oil wells 

 are now found, and the oil was pressed out of them by a 

 superincumbent weight of rock. Others assert that the same 

 result might be produced from a vast mass of oil-giving vege- 



