ed the campfire. But if burned indoors it made a horrible smoke
and a smell to conjure with. Up to that time whale-oil mostly had been
used for illuminating and lubricating purposes. But whale-oil was
getting too high for plain people. It looked as if there were a "whale
trust." Some one sent a bottle of this "natural" oil down to Professor
Silliman of Yale to have it analyzed. Professor Silliman reported that
the oil had great possibilities if refined, both as a luminant and as a
lubricant.

To refine it, a good man who ran a whisky-still tried his plan of the
worm that never dies, with the oil. The vapor condensed and was caught
in the form of an oil that was nearly white. This oil burned with a
steady flame, if protected by a lamp-chimney.

Rock-oil in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight was worth twenty dollars a
barrel. Lumbermen out of a job turned skimmers, and often collected a
barrel a day, becoming as it were members of the cult known as the
Predatory Rich.

This is what tempted Colonel Drake to bore his well, and see if he might
possibly strike the vein that was making the skimmers turn octopi. It
took Drake nearly a year to drill his well. He met with various
obstacles and difficulties, but on August Twenty-second, Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-nine, that neck of the woods was electrified by the news
that Drake's Folly was gushing rock-oil.

Soon there were various men busily boring all round the neighborhood,
with the aid of spring-poles and other rude devices. Several struck it
rich, but many had their labor for their pains. One man was getting
sixty-five barrels a day and selling the oil for eighteen dollars a
barrel.

The trouble was to transport the oil. Barrels were selling for five
dollars each, and there were no tanks. This was a lumber country, with
no railroads within a hundred miles. One enterprising man went down to
Pittsburgh and bought a raft-load of barrels, which he towed up the
Allegheny River to the mouth of Oil Creek. Then for ten dollars a day he
hired farmers with teams to take the barrels to Titusville and fill them
and bring them back. The oil was floated down to Pittsburgh and sold at
a big profit. Stills were made to refine the oil, which was sold to the
consumer at seventy-five cents a gallon. The heavy refuse-oils were
thrown away.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty began the making of lamp-chimneys, a most
profitable industry. The chimneys sold for fifty cents each, and with
the aid of Sir Isaa