278 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



borhood of London, Ontario, did not suffice to insure from 

 the enchantment the very next man who gazed upon a 

 limestone cliff reeking with the oozings of bitumen. And 

 all this infatuation was indulged in spite of scientific advice, 

 or in blissful ignorance of scientific teachings. Sweet is 

 anticipation. An Ohio man showed me one day a quantity 

 of fragments of this limestone, which were completely sat- 

 urated after the usual style. It was a new sight to him, 

 and he felt assured that Nature had simply used them as 

 a roofing over an immense reservoir of oil. I recognized 

 the formation at a glance, and remembered fifty instances 

 in which it had been pierced without success. I assured 

 the gentleman that it would be useless to bore in that 

 rock. My advice saved a friend from becoming a fellow- 

 victim, but the Ohio gentleman returned, and, like hun- 

 dreds of others, resolved to trust his own ignorance in 

 preference to professional skill. He bored his hole, and — 

 it is still there ! 



In another instance, a gentleman of another state became 

 fascinated by the smell of oil about an old stone-quarry in 

 the Corniferous limestone. " Surely the oil must be treas- 

 ured in these rocks," he said to himself. So, at great ex- 

 pense, he leased ground, erected buildings, employed hands, 

 and bored a hole about six hundred feet in depth. As in 

 all explorations of this formation, the never-failing smell 

 of oil was continually taken for a " fine show," and he per- 

 severed in pushing downward. At length, however, the 

 smell of oil gave out, and courage was kept up by smell- 

 ing occasionally a piece of the surface-rock, or stirring the 

 mud and w T ater that had accumulated in the depressions 

 of the quarry. The smell w r as a perpetual invigorator. 

 Every sniff was worth fifty dollars to the grand enter- 

 prise. Every gas-bubble that could be conjured to the 

 surface was good for another check. But at length the 



