I sometimes see their daughter, the Princess Mary, whom I love with all my heart, but whom I can only visit once during the week. She is charming, and already gives promise of a noble character. The princess royal, during her dying moments, left her under the protection of Elizabeth, the king's daughter and the prince royal's sister. Elizabeth is warmly interested in the young princess, and sincerely attached to her brother; she is a highly meritorious personage.
May I beg you, madame, to continue toward me your previous sentiments of kindness, and to accept the expression of my unbounded esteem.
L. Moszynska.
The prince royal, Charles, survived his wife several months, and their daughter, still very young, was confided to the guardianship of Prince Charles's sister. When she reached a marriageable age, she wedded Prince Carignan, of Savoy, and their descendants are now allied to the reigning family of Sardinia.
PETROLEUM.
Lucian of Samosata is responsible for the strange story of Minerva—how Jupiter commanded Vulcan to split open his skull with a sharp axe, and how the warlike virgin leaped in full maturity from the cleft in the brain, thoroughly armed and ready for deeds of martial daring, brandishing her glittering weapons with fiery energy, and breaking at once into the wild Pyrrhic dance. We refer to this myth, bearing, as it doubtless does, an important moral in its bosom, as suggestive of the sudden and gigantic proportions of a traffic which has recently loomed up in the region of Western Pennsylvania. The petroleum trade has worn no swaddling bands, acknowledged no leading strings, but sprung at once into full maturity. In less than one year from the moment of its inception, it has fairly eclipsed the Whale Fishery, gray with time, and strong through the energy and vigor with which it has ever been prosecuted. And who can measure its extent in the future, since it can only be limited by the sources of the supply flowing in the depths of the laboratories of the Great Chemist?
Petroleum, in some form or other of its various developments, is no new substance in the world's history. More than two thousand years before the Christian era, we read of its existence in the days of the builders of Babel, when men sought to realize the dreams of the Titans, and would scale heaven itself in their insane folly. It may have been used in the building of the ark. Herodotus informs us it was largely used in the construction of the walls and towers of Babylon. Diodorus Siculus confirms this testimony. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, one of the tributaries of the Euphrates, in the form of asphaltum. By its aid were reared those mighty walls and hanging gardens which filled the heart of Nebuchadnezzar with such a dream of pride as he exclaimed: 'Is this not great Babylon that I have built?'
And from those days so ancient, when history would be dim and obscure, were it not for the light of inspiration on the sacred page, down to the present time, petroleum has occupied a place in the arrangements of man, either as an article of utility or luxury. It has been one of God's great gifts to his creatures, designed for their happiness, but kept treasured up in His secret laboratory, and developed only in accordance with their necessities. And now, in our own days, and in these ends of the earth, the great Treasure House has been unlocked, the seal broken, and the supply furnished most bountifully.
The oil region of Western Pennsylvania is the portion of oil-producing territory that now occupies the largest share of attention. It is confined principally to the valley of Oil Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany River, which it enters at a point about sixty miles south from Lake Erie. It is true that oil wells are successfully worked on the banks of the Alleghany for some distance above and below the mouth of Oil Creek: still the county of Venango has monopolized almost the whole number of oil-producing wells in this region.