PETROLEUM.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 71, 6 November 1862, Page 6 (Supplement)

PETROLEUM.

(From the Cornhill Magazine.) One terrible catastrophe described in a local newspaper strikingly shows the peril attending the acceptance of this gift of nature. During the drilling of a well, a sudden rush of oil at the rate of seventy barrels an hour, took place, the stream ascending forty-one feet above the surface of the ground. From this mass of oil the gas or benzine rose in a cloud fifty or sixty feet higher. All the fires in the neighbourhood were immediately extinguished, excepting one four hundred paces distant, spark from which ignited the floating gas and in a moment the whole air was in roaring flames. As soon as the gas took fire, the oil jet was in a furious blaze, and falling like water from a fountain over a space one hundred feet in diameter, each drop came down a blazing globe of burning oil. In a moment the ground was in a flame constantly increasing and augmented by (he falling oil. A scene of indescribable horror then took place. Scores ot men were thrown flat, and numbers horribly burned, rushed blazing Irom the spot, shrieking and screaming in their anguish. Just within the circle of the flames be seen lour bodies boiling in the seething oil and one man who had been digging at a ditch to convey away the petroleum to a lower part of the ground, was killed while at work, and could be seen as he fell over the handle of the spade roasting in the fierce element. Mr. 11. E. Eons, a gentlemen largely interested in the walls of this locality, and whose income from him amounted to one thousand dollars a-day, was standing near the pit, and was blown twenty feet by the explosion Ho got up and ran about ten* or fifteen feet further and was dragged out by two men, and conveyed to a shanty some distance from the well. When he arrived not a vestige of clothing was left upon him but his stockings and boots. His hair was bursing olfas well as his finger nails, Ids ears and his eyelids, while the balls of his eyes were crisped up to nothing. In this condition ho lived nine hours. The heat of the fire was so intense that no one could approach within one hundred and fifty feet without scorching his skin or garment. It war the most frightful and yet the grandest pyroteehnical display ever vouchsafed to a human being. Several days after the oil was still rushing np on the fire with the same regularity and speed, throwing up, it was calculated, at least one hundred barrels an hour, covering an immense space with flaming oil —a loss to the proprietors of the. well ot from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars daily. No human power can extinguish the flames and the oil, therefore, must burn until the well is exhausted. The discoveries iu America will necessarily lead to the study ot the way iu which the great reservoirs ot petroleum are distributed under tiro earth s surface. Hitherto it would appear that although the substance be popularly denominated roe!; oil, it is usually found in morasses, swamps and peat bogs, sometimes at a distance from luxuriant vegetation, but occasionally, as iu Zante, closely neighbored by vines and other beautiful shrubs. Here the marsh is small, bounded on one side by a bank of shingle, which protects it from the sea, and surrounded on a the other sides bv a semicircular range of hills, clearly indicating that what is now a marsh Was formerly the crater of a volcano. In Canada, the oil is found by boring through a stiff day from fifty to a hundred feet in depth, mingled confusedly with vast boulders and fragments oflimslone torn from (he underlaying rocks. The surface of (lie plain, situated at no great distance from the lakes is flat, swampy, and densely wooded, a description which appears to answer equally well to the aspect of the oil districts iu the United States, wherehowerer, it is sometimes necessary to carry down the borings to a depth of five hundred feet. It may bo conjectured that the true sources of the are situated in the nearest ranges of mountains, which may account for the prodigious force with which the petroleum, when an opening has been made tor it, shoots up into the atmosphere. Vv ater, it is well known, will always endeavour when first emancipated from the earth, to rise to the level from which it originally flowed ; and the specific gravity of the petroleum being considerably less than that of (ho water, iu may be expected to display a stronger tendency to "attain the height of its original spring-head than the most buoyant and elastic fountain.