“It is light bottled up for tens-of-thousands of years—light absorbed by plants and vegetables. * * * And now, after being buried long ages, that latent light is again brought forth and made to work for human purposes.”—Stephenson.
“It is not a farthing glim in a bedroom.”—Charles Reade.
“The west glimmers with some streaks of day.”—Shakespeare.
“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Psalms cxxxix: 11.
The Land Columbus ran against, by anticipating Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West,” was not neglected in the unstinted distribution of petroleum. It abounds in South America, in the West Indies, the United States and Canada. The most extensive and phenomenal natural fountain of petroleum ever known is on the Island of Trinidad. Hot bitumen has filled a basin four miles in circumference, three-quarters of a mile from the sea, estimated to contain the equivalent of ten-millions of barrels of crude-oil. The liquid boils up continually, observing no holidays or Sundays, seething and foaming at the center of the lake, cooling and thickening as it recedes, and finally becoming solid asphaltum. The bubbling, hissing, steaming caldron emits a sulphurous odor, perceptible for ten or twelve miles and decidedly suggestive of the orthodox Hades. Humboldt in 1799 reported his impressions of this spontaneous marvel, in producing which the puny hand of man had no share. From it is derived the dark, tough, semi-elastic material, first utilized in Switzerland for this purpose, which paves the streets of scores of cities. Few stop to reflect, as they glide over the noiseless surface on whirling bicycles or behind prancing steeds, that the smooth asphaltum pavements and the clear “water-white” in the piano-lamp have a common parentage. Yet bloomers and pantaloons, twin-creations of the tailor, or diamonds and coal, twin-links of carbon, are not related more closely.
“Even men and monkeys may be kin.”
The earliest printed reference to petroleum in America is by Joseph de la Roche D’Allion, a Franciscan missionary who crossed the Niagara river from Canada in 1629 and wrote of oil, in what is now New York, known to the Indians and by them given a name signifying “plenty there.” Likely this was the petroleum occupying cavities in fossils at Black Rock, below Buffalo, in sufficient abundance to be an object of commerce. Concerning the celebrated oil-spring of the Seneca Indians near Cuba, N. Y., which D’Allion may also have seen, Prof. Benjamin Silliman in 1833 said:
“This is situated in the western part of the county of Alleghany, in the state of New York. This county is the third from Lake Erie on the south line of the state, the counties of Cattaraugus and Chautauqua lying west and forming the southwestern termination of the state of New York. The spring is very near the line which divides Alleghany and Cattaraugus. * * * The country is rather mountainous, but the road running between the ridges is very good and leads through a cultivated region rich in soil and picturesque in scenery. Its geographical formation is the same as that which is known to prevail in the western region; a silicious sandstone with shale, and in some places limestone, is the immediate basis of the country. * * * The oil-spring or fountain rises in the midst of a marshy ground. It is a muddy, dirty pool of about eighteen feet in diameter and is nearly circular in form. There is no outlet above ground, no stream flowing from it, and it is, of course, a stagnant water, with no other circulation than than which springs from the changes in temperature and from the gas and petroleum that are constantly rising through the pool.