membering the unprogressive character of Chinese arts and industries there is ground for the belief that they may have been using this natural gas as an illuminant these hundreds of years.
In the United States the existence of petroleum was known to the Pilgrim Fathers, who doubtless obtained their first information of it from the Indians, for whom, in New York and Western Pennsylvania, it was called Seneka-oil. It was otherwise known as "British" oil and oil of naphtha, and was considered "a sovereign remedy for an inward bruise."
The record of natural gas in this country is not so complete as that of petroleum, but we learn that an important gas-spring was known in West Bloomfield, N. Y., seventy years ago. In 1864 a well was sunk to a depth of three hundred feet upon that vein, from which a sufficient supply of gas was obtained to illuminate and heat the city of Rochester (twenty-five miles distant) it was supposed. But the pipes which were laid for that purpose, being of wood, were unfitted to withstand the pressure, in consequence of which the scheme was abandoned; but gas from that well is now in use as an illuminant and as fuel both in the town of West Bloomfield and at Honeoye Falls. The village of Fredonia, N. Y., has been using natural gas in lighting the streets for thirty years or thereabout. On Big Sewickley Creek, in Westmoreland County, Pa., natural gas was used for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt thirty years ago, and gas is still issuing at the same place. Natural gas has been in use in several localities in Eastern Ohio for twenty-five years, and the wells are flowing as vigorously as when first known. It has also been in use in West Virginia for a quarter of a century, as well as in the petroleum region of Western Pennsylvania, where it has long been utilized in generating steam for drilling oil-wells.
In 1826 the "American Journal of Science" contained a letter from Dr. S. P. Hildreth, who, in writing of the products of the Muskingum (Ohio) Valley, said: "They have sunk two wells, which are now more than four hundred feet in depth; one of them affords a very strong and pure salt-water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or, as it is vulgarly called, 'Seneka-oil,' and besides is so subject to such tremendous explosions of gas, as to force out all the water and afford nothing but gas for several days, that they make little or no salt."
The value of the foregoing references is to be found in the testimony they offer as to the duration of the supply of natural gas. Whether we look to the eternal flaming fissures of the Caucasus, or to New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there is much to encourage the belief that the flow of natural gas may be, like the production of petroleum, increased rather than diminished by the draughts made upon it. Petroleum, instead of diminishing in quantity by the millions of barrels drawn from Western Pennsylvania in the last quarter
