As a medicinal agent it has long been employed in this country. It was used by the Indians in this way when the country was first discovered. It was also held in high estimation by the early settlers in what are now called the oil regions, for the medication of cuts and bruises, as well as an internal curative. It formed the staple of the British and American oils that were sold largely and at high rates throughout the country. It is a remarkable fact that since the quantity has increased so largely the popular faith has been correspondingly weakened in its medical efficacy.
Further uses are developed in the process of refining. This latter is exceedingly simple. The crude oil is placed in an iron retort connected with a coil of pipe in a vessel of cold water. Heat is then applied to the retort, when the process of distillation commences. The first product is a light-colored, volatile substance, sometimes called naphtha, that is very explosive. This substance is used in the place of spirits of turpentine in the preparation of paints and varnishes, and, after further treatment, in removing paints and grease from clothing. The next product from the retort is the refined fluid for illumination. This is of a yellow color, with a bluish tinge and powerful odor, requiring further treatment before it is ready for the lamp. This treatment consists in placing it in a cistern lined with lead, and agitating it with a portion of sulphuric acid. The acid and impurities having subsided, the oil is drawn off, and further agitated with soda lye, and finally with water, when it is ready for use. After this a coarse oil for the lubrication of machinery is produced. Paraffine is another product resulting from this distillation. It is a white, tasteless, and inodorous substance, used in the manufacture of candles. The residuum in the retort may be applied to various useful purposes. It is sometimes used as fuel, and sometimes takes the place of coal tar in the arts, and by chemical processes is made to yield products useful in the laboratory and in the manufactory.
But the æsthetics connected with this distillation must not be passed by in silence. On a bright, sunshiny day we see a bright globule of petroleum rising from the bottom of the stream. As it reaches the surface of the water it disperses, and, as it glides away, all the colors of the rainbow are reflected from its undulating surface.
'What radiant changes strike th' astonished sight!
What glowing hues of mingled shade and light!
Not equal beauties gild the lucid west
With parting beams o'er all profusely drest,
Not lovelier colors paint the vernal dawn,
When Orient dews impearl th' enamelled lawn,
Than in its waves in bright suffusion flow,
That now with gold empyreal seem to glow;
Now in pellucid sapphires meet the view,
And emulate the soft celestial hue;
Now beams a flaming crimson on the eye,
And now assume the purple's deeper dye.
But here description clouds each shining ray—
What terms of art can Nature's powers display?'
We gaze upon those colors, ever changing in their lustre and variety, until imagination revels in its most delightful dreams, suggesting thoughts of the good and beautiful, and reminding how beauty lingers amid the most unpromising things of earth! And just as the bow that spans the mantling cloud reminds us of all beautiful things that glow around its antitype that spans the emerald throne on high, so, as we gaze upon the prismatic tints that are reflected from the oily surface, we dream of all that is beautiful in color and gorgeous in tinted radiance, as being hidden amid the elements of petroleum.
This dream has its fulfilment amid the processes of distillation and treatment. One product in these processes is called aniline, that is, the base of those beautiful colors so popular with ladies these last days—Mauve, Magenta, and Solferino. And in process of time, no doubt, the most delicate colors for flower and landscape painting will be educed, that will give a new impetus to the fine arts, and to the development of taste in our midst.
And now where shall we look for the origin of this treasure? From what elements is it elaborated? We cannot go with the great Chemist to his laboratory and look upon the ingredients, and notice the treatment used there. Science, although denominated the 'star eyed,' cannot penetrate the mighty strata of everlasting rocks that lie beneath us, and reveal to us these mysteries of nature. 'There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth His hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and His eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid, bringeth He forth to light.'
Nature has her mysteries. The earth has its great secrets. But over all, a God of wisdom and goodness presides. Age after age has rolled by—change after change has agitated the history of Time, as forms of beauty have been moulded and marred—as songs of joy have been sung, and requiems of sadness chanted in the great highways and quiet bypaths of life—the living of bygone ages are slumbering quietly in the dust, and the living of the present are hurrying to the same 'pale realms of shade.' The nations of antiquity have passed off the stage with all their grandeur and littleness, and the nations of more modern times are surging and dashing to and fro, like ships in the wild chaos of ocean's storms. God alone is great!
Changes, too, have been quietly going on beneath us in the earth's bosom. A great dream of science, but perhaps an earnest, glowing reality, suggests that when God's almighty power was rolling away the curtains of darkness from earth's chaotic state—forming channels for oceans and rivers, and heaving up as barriers the mountain chains of earth, His eternal prescience of man's coming need induced Him to bury deep down in subterranean recesses the imperfect vegetable organisms of a pre-Adamic state, that in the ages to come, coals and oils and gases might be drawn forth to supply his wants.
We find in the coal deposits traces of ferns and leaves of gigantic stature and proportions. Casts of huge boles of trees are found among our fossils, inducing the belief that in some bygone age quantities of vegetable matter, absolutely enormous, were produced on the earth's surface. And it is presumable that in some of the revolutions that have agitated our planet, renovating, improving, and fitting it for a higher order of life, mighty deposits of this vegetable matter were buried up amid the rocky strata, to be evolved in new forms and products. And it may be that since the days of Adam this vegetable deposit has been undergoing the process of destructive distillation in the hidden regions beneath. In this process heat would not be wanting: it is furnished by the natural constitution of the earth.