Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/745

PETROLEUM 713 from the dawn of history. Herodotus wrote of the springs of Zacynthus (Zante), and the fountains of Hit have been celebrated by the Arabs and Persians. Pliny and Dioscorides describe the oil of Agrigentuin, which was used in lamps under the name of " Sicilian oil," and mention is made of petroleum springs in China in the earliest records of that ancient people. The abundance of petroleum and the fire- temple at Baku on the Caspian have been frequently de scribed by travellers who have gone overland from Europe to India, from the time of Marco Polo to recent years. Petro leum in North America was first mentioned by a Franciscan missionary, Joseph de la Roche d Allion, in a letter written in 1629 and published in Sagard s Histoire du Canada in 1636. Peter Kalm described the springs on Oil Creek in his book of travels in North America, published in London in 1772. In 1750 the French commander at Fort Duquesne described them in a letter to General Montcalm, and later, towards the close of the last century, frequent mention is made of oil-springs in correspondence relating to what is now western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Ken tucky. In 1765 and 1826 the British Government sent embassies to the court of Ava, in the reports of which mentiu^ made of the petroleum springs and wells near Rangoon on the Irawadi. During the early years of the present century the occurrence of bitumen, and particularly of its liquid forms, was noticed by scientific men and travellers in various localities. In Europe, Boussingault s researches upon the petroleum of Bechelbronn (Lower Alsace) and the discovery of paraffin by Reichenbach attracted much attention. Petroleum was observed and described as early as 1814 in Washington county, Ohio, in wells at that time being bored for brine. In 1819 a well bored for brine in Wayne county, Kentucky, yielded so much black petroleum that it was abandoned. It has continued to yield small quantities until the present time. In 1829 a well drilled for brine near Burkesville, Cumber land county, Kentucky, yielded such a flow of petroleum that it was regarded as a wonderful natural phenomenon. This well is estimated to have yielded, up to 1860, 50,000 barrels of oil, the larger part of which was wasted. Of the rest a few barrels were bottled and sold as a liniment in the United States and Europe under the name of " Ameri can oil." About the year 1847 E. W. Binney of Manchester, Eng land, called attention to the petroleum discovered at Rid- dings, near Alfreton in Derbyshire, and a few years later he, together with James Young and others, commenced the manufacture of illuminating and other oils from it. The supply of crude material from this source soon became in adequate, and they then commenced distilling the Boghead mineral that had been found near Bathgate in Scotland. The success attending this enterprise soon attracted atten tion in the United States of America, and a number of estab lishments were in operation in the course of a few years, some of them being licensed under Young s patents. In 1 8 5 1 , when petroleum on Oil Creek was worth 75 cents a gallon in the crude state, it was tested as a crude material for the manufacture of illuminating oil by Messrs William and Luther Attwood, and Joshua Merrill, at the United States Chemical Manufacturing Company s works at Waltham, near Boston, Massachusetts, and its merits for that purpose fully established. But its scarcity at that time prevented its use in commercial quantities, and the establishments at Boston and Portland, Maine, under the charge of Messrs Merrill and William Attwood, continued to use Boghead mineral and albertite for a number of years after petroleum was produced in sufficient quantity. Petroleum was refined and offered for sale in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as early as 1855, but the quantity was too small to influence even the local trade ; it, however, created a small demand for the crude oil. The well-known fact that brine- wells often pro duced petroleum led those who sold the "American oil " to embellish the label on the bottles with a derrick and other accompaniments of a brine- well ; and the story is told that the projector of the first well drilled exclusively for petro leum was led to undertake it through reflecting upon this picture. Some oil from one of the natural springs near Titusville, Pennsylvania, was sent to Professor B. Silliman, junior, of Yale College, and he made a report upon it which has become a classic in the literature of petroleum. This report was so satisfactory that a company was organized in New Haven, and E. L. Drake was sent to drill a well upon land that was leased in the valley of Oil Creek, a short distance below the spot where the city of Titus ville now stands. The region was then almost a wilder ness, and many delays were experienced before he succeeded in getting his men and machinery in operation. He was at first thwarted by quicksands and water, but he finally drove an iron pipe 36 feet down to the rock. This device, said to have been original with Drake, has been of great value in artesian boring ever since he used it. After drilling 33 feet on the 28th of August 1859, the drill fell suddenly 6 inches into a crevice, and was left until the next day, when the drill-hole was found to be nearly filled with petroleum. No spot in the entire territory where petroleum has since been obtained could have been selected where the oil was to be obtained nearer the surface. The success of this enterprise led to the immediate drilling of other wells, first in the valley of Oil Creek and its tributaries, and later over the higher land between Oil Creek and the Alleghany river below Tidioute. As this territory began to be exhausted, the region of the lower Alleghany, in Butler and Clarion counties, yielded wells of great richness, and finally the Bradford field in M Kean county became the centre of production. A careful com parison of the situations of some of the most productive wells led to the discovery that the areas yielding oil were not irregular in outline, but extended across the country in narrow belts, without regard to the present configuration of the surface. The areas of these belts were in general parallel, and extended in a north-east and south-west direction, 15 to 20 from the meridian. As the exhaustion of the oil -fields of Butler and Clarion counties led pro ducers to seek a more productive locality, lines were run by compass on the supposed axis of the oil-belt over forest- covered hills for many miles, until they reached the town of Bradford, near which wells had previously been drilled without success. Deeper wells were drilled, and oil was obtained, resulting in the development since 1875 of about 68,000 acres of the most uniformly productive and exten sive oil-territory yet discovered. In the province of Ontario, Canada, principally in the vicinity of Enniskillen, a territory of limited extent but great productiveness has been under development for the last twenty years. In the region about Baku and in the valley of the Kuban, at the eastern and western extremi ties of the Caucasus, petroleum has been obtained for an unknown period, and is now being produced from artesian borings in large quantities. In Galicia and Roumania it is also obtained in commercial quantities. These regions with the United States furnish the petroleum of commerce. Japan, China, Burmah, and Italy have yielded petroleum in quantities sufficient to supply a local demand, but the vast quantity of the American oil and low price at which it is furnished have rendered the production in these coun tries unprofitable. Geographical Distribution. Petroleum "was found about one hundred years since in making the duke of Bridge- water s tunnel at Worsley, at Wigan and West Leigh in the Lancashire coal-fields, at Coalbrookdale and Wellington XVIII. 9