“The years that are gone roll before me with their deeds.”—Ossian.
“Oil out of the flinty rock.”—Deuteronomy xxxii: 13.
“And the rock poured me out rivers of oil.”—Job xxix: 6.
“Will the Lord be pleased with * * * ten-thousands of rivers of oil?”—Micah vi: 7.
“I have myself seen pitch drawn out of the lake and from water in Zacynthus.”—Herodotus.
“The people of Agrigentum save oil in pits and burn it in lamps.”—Dioscorides.
“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”—St. Matthew xvi: 3.
Petroleum, a name to conjure with and weave romances around, helps out Solomon’s oft-misapplied declaration of “No new thing under the sun.” Possibly it filled no place in domestic economy when the race, if the Darwinian theory passes muster, sported as ring-tailed simians, yet the Scriptures and primitive writers mention the article repeatedly. Many intelligent persons, recalling the tallow-dip and lard-oil lamp of their youth, consider the entire petroleum-business of very recent date, whereas its history goes back to remotest antiquity. Naturally they are disappointed to find it, in various aspects, “the same thing over again.” Men and women in the prime of life have forgotten the flickering pine-knot, the sputtering candle or the smoky sconce hardly long enough to associate rock-oil with “the brave days of old.” This idea of newness the host of fresh industries created by oil-operations has tended to deepen in the popular mind. Enjoying the brilliant glow of a modern argand-burner, double-wicked, silk-shaded, onyx-mounted and altogether a genuine luxury, it seems hard to realize that the actual basis of this up-to-date elegance has existed from time immemorial. Of derricks, drilling-tools, tank-cars, refineries and pipe-lines our ancestors were blissfully ignorant; but petroleum itself, the foundation of the countless paraphernalia of the oil-trade of to-day, flourished “ere Noah’s flood had space to dry.” Although used to a limited extent in crude-form for thousands of years, it was reserved for the present age to introduce the grand illuminant to the world generally. After sixty centuries the game of “hide-and-seek” between Mother Earth and her children has terminated in favor of the latter. They have pierced nature’s internal laboratories, tapping the huge oil-tanks wherein the products of her quiet chemistry had accumulated “in bond,” and up came the unctuous fluid in volumes ample to fill all the lamps the universe could manufacture and to grease every axle on this revolving planet! The demon of darkness has been exorcised from the gloomy caverns of old to make room for the modern angel of light. Science, the rare alchemist which converts the tear of unpaid labor into a steam-giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil, lays bare the deepest recesses of the past to bring forth treasures for the present.