102 JVotice 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 comparative- 

 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 of 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, should be 

 wrought without ruinous expenditure. 



It is worthy of remark, that the cattle drink, freely, of the 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^irtues 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 Avernus, to them. 



The present depth of the petroleum spring is but a few feet. It is 

 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 pit; 

 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-airy 

 (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 

 other 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 his own mind and not 

 from any geological theory. 



