102 Notice of a Fountain of Petroleum. 
it would not be wise, without more evidence, to-proceed to sink shafts; 
for they would be very expensive and might be fruitless. It would. 
be much wiser, to bore; which would enable them, at a cgmparative- 
-ly moderate expense, to ascertain the existence, depth and thickness 
_of the coal, should it exist; but, even this should not be done with- 
out a previous diligent examination of water courses, banks, precipi- 
ces, excavations for wells, cellars, roads, &c. which might perhaps’. 
materially aid the enquiry. The well known existence va bitumin- 
ous coal beds at the distance of a few miles in Pennsylvania, renders 
it highly probable that they may pass under this region, but perhaps 
at too great a depth to admit of profitable extraction ; for the abun-— 
dance of coal in other parts of Pennsylvania and the west ;—the 
magnitude and easy accessibleness of the beds, and the excellence of 
the coal, will long render it impossible that thin beds, in other parts 
of the country, especially if lying-deep in the ground, aheold be 
: without ruinous expenditure. | 
“Itis worthy of remark, that the cattle drink, freely, of them waters 
of the oil springs, a fact which we should hardly expect, since they 
are so foul, and since there is abundance of pure water near; and 
also because we should expect that the petroleum would render the 
water very disgusting to animals ; perhaps they may find in this foun- 
tain, something of the reputed virtues of tar water; I could not learn 
that birds ever light upon or near the spring; the mephitic gases 
might, perhaps, make it a real Arernus, to them. 
The present depth of the petroleum spring is but a few feet. Itis 
scarcely necessary to add, that, in accordance with the usual state of 
popular impression in similar cases, it is confidently asserted here, 
that the oil spring, was, when first known, literally a bottomless pits 
we may however, safely conclude that it was then much deeper than. 
at present. When I asked a plain man, in the vicinity, how he ima- 
gined it was first formed, he replied, that he believed the gas-air; 
(as he called it,) blew up the ground, at the time when the fountain 
first rose, and that the flow. of the water and gas had preserved it ever 
since, although it had been greatly filled and clogged by earth and 
‘substances, falling or thrown into the cavity. I shall not attempt 
to substitute any theory of my own, for this indigenous hypothesis, of 
an uninstructed man, who certainly reasoned ingeniously, if not con- 
clusively. I presume he had never heard either of Pluto or Nep- 
tune, and therefore drew his. conclusions from wie own mind and wm woh 
from any geological theory. 
