151 



That this immense branch of commerce should all have 

 been developed since the summer of 1859, and most of it 

 within two years ; that the capital and the labor for it 

 should have been furnished without crippling or impairing 

 any other branch ; that such a ready and extensive market 

 should have been found for a comparatively unknown and 

 hitherto unused material, are facts alike wonderful and in- 

 teresting. 



I. Geographical Distribution. — Until the excitement 

 consequent upon the discovery of rock oil in this country 

 turned men's attention to the subject, few except the learned 

 knew how widely it and its kindred substances were dis- 

 tributed, and how remote the date at which they were 

 known to men. Herodotus, who wrote 500 years before 

 Christ, describes minutely the wells of Petroleum, which are 

 still in existence in the island of Zante. The famous cement 

 with which Babylon was built, was composed in part of 

 bitumen obtained from pits in the vicinity. Numerous 

 bituminous springs are found along the shores of the Dead 

 Sea, and the water is strongly impregnated with the same 

 material. In the Burmese Empire at Rangoon, there have 

 been ever since it was known to Europeans, hundreds of 

 years ago, Naphtha wells, furnishing abundance of this oil. 

 There are said to be at the present time not less than 500 

 of these, yielding 412,000 hogsheads annually. It is used 

 throughout the Burman Empire and many parts of India, for 

 burning in lamps and for preserving timber against insect. 



Doubtless it was only its offensive smell — for they used it 

 in the natural state — which prevented its introduction into 

 civilized countries from this source long ago. 



In Trinidad, one of the West India Islands, there is a 

 lake three miles in circumference, composed of bituminous 

 substances in various conditions of hardness. At Bakoo in 

 Persia, on the west shore of the Caspian Sea, there is a 

 tract of country twenty-five miles long by one broad, where 

 large quantities of this oil are collected from wells ten or 



