PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS IN NEW YORK 431 



tory. The amount of gas steadily declined and on the whole 

 rather rapidly, till after a few months it was no longer a safe 

 reliance in domestic heating. Its inexpressible convenience led 

 many to retain the use of it in cooking stoves, even though great 

 inconvenience attended the short supply. For light also it con- 

 tinued to be largely used. Things have gone on in about the 

 same way from that day to this. The valves of all the wells are 

 opened wide to the pipe line. Every foot of gas that can be se- 

 cured has been in sharp demand from the beginning. 



The company has expended more than $38,000 on its plant. It 

 lost its one opportunity, not only to recoup itself but to secure a 

 handsome reward for its courage and enterprise, when it rejected 

 the offer of the Eastern oil company referred to above. 



Its first wells cost about $3000 each, but after a little the com- 

 pany purchased a set of drilling tools and employed its own 

 drillers. By this arrangement the cost of sinking wells was re- 

 duced to 60 cents a foot, or less than one half the price first paid. 



The company has on hand a plant of fair equipment and char- 

 acter for the distribution of gas. The village is enterprising and 

 prosperous and gaseous fuel has already established its reputation 

 there so that a large and promising market is assured if only an 

 adequate supply can be furnished. 



It is refreshing to find that in the location of the wells above 

 described there was no recognition of any "theories" whatever, as 

 men engaged in this line of business love to style their crude spec- 

 ulations and vagaries. There was no " northeast line " on which 

 they depended, but they had leased a considerable acreage con- 

 venient to the village and the wells were located on these tracts 

 solely as commonplace and intelligible considerations dictated. 

 It is true that after drilling several wells the company began to 

 consider that a line joining two of the best must be the line of 

 promise, but nothing came from this crude conclusion. In locat- 

 ing well no. 5 the compan}^ in urgent need of gas to supply its 

 clamorous customers, thought to avoid all risk of failure by lo- 

 cating the new well not only close to no. 1, which was then their 

 best well, but even between it and another producing well. No. 5 

 was the only well of the list that was an absolutely dryhole! 



In the Fulton wells gas was found all through the descent, 

 namely, in the red Medina, in the Oswego sandstone, the Pulaski 



