HAWORTH. | Discoveries of Oil and Gas. 15 
ished to one barrel a week, finally ceasing altogether. Once 
thirty or forty barrels stored in a cistern took fire from the 
gas at the well having been ignited by a workman carrying a 
light. The burning oil ran into the creek, blazed to the tops of 
the trees, and exhibited for hours to the amazed settlers the 
novelty of a rivulet on fire. Ten miles above McConnelsville, 
on the Muskingum river, results almost identical attended the 
boring of salt-wells in 1819. Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, 
in an account of the region written that year, says of the bor- 
ings for salt water: 
‘“* “They have sunk two wells more than 400 feet; one of them 
affords a strong and pure water, but not in great quantity; 
the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or as 
it is vulgarly called “‘Seneca Oil,’ and besides is subject to such 
tremendous explosions of gas, . . . that they make little 
or no salt. Nevertheless, the petroleum affords considerable 
profit and is beginning to be in demand for workshops and 
manufactories. It affords a clear, brisk light, when burned in 
this way, and will be a valuable article for lighting the street- 
lamps in the future cities of Ohio.’ 
“The last sentence bears the force of a prophecy. Writing 
about the year 1832 the same observant author directs atten- . 
tion to another peculiar feature: 
“Since the first settlement of the regions west of the Ap- 
palachian range the hunters and pioneers have been acquainted 
with this oil. Rising in a hidden and mysterious manner from 
the bowels of the earth, it soon arrested their attention and 
acquired great value in the eyes of the simple sons of the forest. 
Pita From its success in rheumatism, burns, coughs, 
sprains, etc., it was justly entitled to its celebrity. . . . It 
is also well adapted to prevent friction in machinery, for, being 
free of gluten, so common to animal and vegetable oils, it pre- 
serves the parts to which it is applied for a long time in free 
motion; where a heavy vertical shaft runs in a socket it is 
preferable to all or any other articles. This oil rises in greater 
or less abundance in most of the salt-wells and, collecting 
where it rises, is removed from time to time with a ladle.’ 
“Ts it not strange that, with the sources of supply thus 
pointed out in different counties and states and the useful ap- 
plications of petroleum fairly understood, its real value should 
have remained unappreciated and unrecognized for more than 
thirty years, and be at last determined through experiments 
upon the distillation of bituminous shales and coals? Wells 
sunk hundreds of feet for salt water produced oil in abundance, 
yet it occurred to no one that, if bored expressly for petroleum, 
it could be found in paying quantity! Hamilton McClintock, 
owner of the ‘oil-spring’ famed in history and romance, when 
somebody ventured to suggest that he should dig into the rock 
a short distance, instead of skimming the petroleum with a 
