473 
PETROLEUM IN EUROPE. 
The constantly increasing importance of the trade in miner.al oils has 
attracted attention to the oil deposits of Europe. 
It is now certain that, in a period more or less brief, the old conti- 
nent will no longer "be tributary to America for oils for lighting extracted 
from the earth. Every day new natural reservoirs of petroleum are 
discovered ; and, at the same time geologists are beginning to under- 
stand oil fields better, and the manner in which they are distributed 
over the globe. Already observations have been taken which enable 
researches to be made with much greater chances of success than when 
they were carried on at hazard. 
Among the localities which already export petroleum is one which 
particularly interests the port at Marseilles — Moldo-Wallachia. This 
country is traversed by navigable rivers which fall into the Mediterra- 
nean ; the Pruth and the Sereth arrive there by the Danube. The 
Dneister, too, although leaving Moldavia to the right, belongs directly 
to the hydrographical system of the Danubian provinces ; and by the 
communication which it establishes between the Carpathians and the 
Bla^k Sea, that river unites Galicia to the Mediterranean. 
In the present state of things the port of Havre is the principal 
French market for petroleum. Marseilles is placed, as regards Canada 
and Pennsylvania, in an unfavourable situation ; in fact, the great dis- 
tance of the Straits of Gibraltar place it for the west in a position of 
marked inferiority. But it is destined by the force of things to become 
a large market when the European reservoirs shall be worked on any 
extensive scale, and when it can receive the mineral oils of Asia by 
the Isthmus of Suez. 
There is an intimate connection between the reservoirs of petroleum 
in Galicia and in Moldo-Wallachia. These two oil-regions, in fact, only 
form one, which is exactly designed by the general line of the Carpa- 
thian mountains. Properly speaking, there is in this part of Europe 
only one and the same system of petroleum reservoirs — the Carpathian. 
As regards Galicia, which during the last few months has been 
studied attentively, the localities in which oil has been discovered, and 
in which new discoveries are being made every day, are grouped to the 
south of the railway from Cracow to Lemberg, the extreme limits of the 
region being Sandec to the west, Drohobyez to the east, Jaslo to the 
north, and Komaneza to the south. In this region a new reservoir 
has very lately been discovered — that of Rzopedz. Such are the 
present limits of the region, but they will not be the same in a 
year, or even in a month, for the inhabitants of the country are begin- 
ning to be seized, like the Americans, with the oil fever, and are boring 
the soil. Unfortunately, however, they carry on operations somewhat 
blindly, and they are without good instruments ; but foreigners are 
