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In 1860 the number of pumping wells had increased, till, at the close of the year, there were nearly 2000: of these, however, only 74 yielded any considerable quantity. The daily yield of these was about 1165 barrels, or 46,600 gallons, and, as the price of the crude oil was then 20 cents per gallon, this amount was worth about $9320. The total quantity sent to market in 1860 was but little over 2,000,000 gallons. In 1861 the production increased greatly, especially after the discovery of the flowing wells. Not less than 20,000,000 gallons were sent to market, and large quantities retained in the oil-region. Meantime, a considerable export demand for the oil had sprung up in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, South America, and the West Indies. The entire exports of the year-including those to California-were probably not far from 2,500,000 gallons. WITHIN the past three years a vast and rapidlyincreasing traffic has sprung up in a mineral product whose existence, though long known, had excited little previous attention,-the rock or petroleum oil. Efforts had been made since 1846and with moderate success-to supply an oil for illuminating and lubricating purposes distilled from the softer or, as they were usually called, the fatty coals. The English cannel coals, the Nova Scotia cannel, the Breckenridge, and some other of the bituminous coals of the western slope of the Appalachian range, produced these oils in considerable quantity. The oils or rather hydrocarbons-thus distilled were less dense than ordinary animal or vegetable oils, but exhaled a peculiar and somewhat unpleasant odor, and burned with abundant smoke, requiring a peculiarly-constructed lamp to consume the excess of carbon. In 1859 there began to be a considerable production of oil from the petroleum wells or pools which had been known to exist in Venango county, Pennsylvania, and its vicinity for more than a century, and from some new ones opened in August of that year at Titusville by Messrs. Bowditch & Drake, and the question of the probability of combining this oil with that distilled from the coal, or of using it alone, after refining, as an illuminating oil, began to be discussed. After careful investigation and experimentation, it was demonstrated that, though possessing less body than the coal-oil, it could be used with satisfactory results for illuminating-purposes. But there was still a difficulty. Could a uniform and sufficient supply be procured, or were the wells and pools as yet opened merely limited deposits, liable to be soon exhausted? This question, which need not have occasioned any anxiety, had the history of petroleum deposits been more generally known, was solved in August, 1861, by the discovery-the result of deeper boring-of spontaneous flowing wells, which threw up vast quantities of the oil,-more, indeed, than could be saved at first, with the scanty supply of tanks, vessels, The invoices of these shipments are undoubtedly barrels, &c. which had been required by the too low, as Mr. Macrae, a leading Liverpool oilpumping wells which up to that time had been broker, on the 18th October, 1862, estimated, from the only source of supply. An intense excitement data in his possession, the receipts of petroleum followed in the oil-region of Pennsylvania, which oils in Great Britain alone from the United States lay mainly along the valley of Oil Creek and its and Canada during the year at over one million tributaries in Venango, Warren, and Crawford pounds sterling ($5,000,000),-it actually exceeded counties. Three thousand barrels of oil a day were £3,000,000,-and intelligent brokers in New York obtained from a single well, and in every direction assert that the whole foreign export exceeded new borings were going on, and new discoveries $10,000,000. The amount sent to California was of flowing wells were made almost daily; while large, but is not readily ascertainable. Nor is other regions of similar geological structure were it practicable to ascertain the entire production, carefully explored for evidence of their capacity scattered as it was over so extended a region and for producing oil. Soon there were oil-wells, sent to market by so many routes. If it bore the either pumping or flowing,-yielding considerable same proportion to the foreign export as that of quantities, in Western Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, the previous year, it must have approached to and Canada; and more recently discoveries have 100,000,000 gallons; but this is hardly probable. been made of the existence of petroleum in large The daily yield from the wells of the Oil Creek quantities in California and in some of the North-region was stated by the "Oil City Register" as In 1862 the traffic met with a still more rapid development. The foreign demand, at first dull, gradually increased, and Liverpool became the great foreign market of the trade, though considerable quantities were shipped to other ports. Nearly 3,000,000 gallons were sent to that port alone, and about 5,000,000 to all the British ports. The exports from the principal ports to foreign countries were as follows:New York....6,783,563 gallons, valued at $2,037,413 Philadelphia. 2,607,203 Boston ......... Baltimore.....1,120,000 891,616 Total......11,402,382 66 46 66 46 66 66 529,575 457,859 500,000 $3,524,847 5717 barrels a day, which would be equivalent to an annual product of about 71,000,000 gallons. A railroad has been constructed, 27 miles in length, from Titusville to Corry, at the junction of the Atlantic & Great Western Railway and the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad, for the transportation of the oil, and its freightage is already very heavy. Large quantities are also sent in barges down Oil Creek and the Alleghany River to Pittsburg, which has been the most important point for refining the oil, though now immense quantities are refined in the vicinity of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Cincinnati. The existence of petroleum springs, pools, and lakes has been long known, and the bitumen and naphtha produced by them have been in use for various purposes for centuries. On the island of Zakanthus, now Zante, there were wells of petroleum in the time of Herodotus, 500 years before Christ, which were minutely described by him, and are still in existence and yield bitumen. Near Ecbatana, in Persia, was a petroleum lake, which Plutarch describes as having been on fire in his time. The perpetual fires of Baku, on a promontory of the Caspian Sea, which have been an object of such devout care among the Parsees for so many centuries, are fed from petroleum springs. In China, in Thibet, and especially in Burmah, near the Irrawadi, are extensive wells or pools of petroleum or naphtha, whose products have afforded a commodity for trade, to a limited extent, for centuries. The Dead Sea, in Palestine, has numerous petroleum springs on its banks, and the bitumen floats upon its waters. In Italy there are several springs of naphtha. In the island of Trinidad there is an extensive lake covered with the products of the hydro-carbons, and known as the Great Pitch Lake,-very fully described in 1855, in the "American Journal of Science," by the late Dr. N. S. Manross, who had visited and explored it; and in Jamaica there are several pools of the same substance. The region near the headwaters of the Genesee River, and along Oil Creek, in Pennsylvania, has long been known as producing this mineral oil, which was used by the Indians in their religious ceremonies and also as a medicament for wounds. Under the name of Seneca Oil, or Genesee Oil, it has been sold for nearly a century, put up in small bottles, as a remedy for bruises, sprains, &c. The region along the southeast shore of Lake Erie has undoubtedly extensive lakes of it at some distance below the surface. At Fredonia, in Chautauqua county, N.Y., many years ago, bubbles of inflammable gas were observed ascending from the mud at the shore of the lake, and the inhabitants constructed a gasometer, collected the gas which ascended, and utilized it for lighting the streets of their village. Yet, while so widely diffused and so generally known, the idea of its adoption as a substitute for oil in illumination seems not to have been practically acted upon before 1859. Opinions are divided as to the origin of petroleum. It was at first regarded by geologists as wholly a product of vegetable carbonization; and it was alleged that the marine vegetation of some portions of the carboniferous era was so rich in hydro-carbons that, under the pressure of the superimposed strata, the oil or petroleum was expressed from them, and flowed into reservoirs in the limestone strata of the coal measures; but it has been found of late that the oil, though sometimes found in the cavities of the limestone rocks of the carboniferous period, is also sometimes found above or below them, and the impression is gaining ground that it may have had its origin in the destruction and decomposition of animals as well as vegetables. The fluctuations in the price of the oil during the year 1862 were extraordinary. In New York and Philadelphia, at the commencement of the year, the crude oil was sold at 221⁄2 to 24 cents a gallon; in May, June, and July, it had fallen to 9, 10, and 11 cents; November 1, it had risen to 18 to 23 cents, and on the 29th of the same month was sold in Philadelphia at 40 and in New York at 55 cents the gallon; while at the close of the year it had fallen again to 25 cents. The fluctuations in the refined oil were equally remarkable. In January, 1862, it brought 40 to 471⁄2 cents, în April, May, and June, 19 to 25 cents, in October, 35 to 50 cents, in November, 95 cents to $1.10, and in December had fallen to 40 cents. |