ss had been pursued with advantage and profit to those who were
engaged. The demand was steady and prices remunerative, and visions of
untold wealth were looming up before the minds of thousands. Prospecting
was extending far and near. Every stream and ravine that deflected
toward the Alleghany or Oil Creek was leased, and in very many
unpropitious localities operations were commenced.

But a change now took place in the development of oil proceedings that
wrought ruin in the hopes of many an ardent operator. In the Oil Creek
region, some of the smaller wells having been exhausted, resort was had
to deeper boring. One hopeful theorist imagined that if the desirable
fluid came from a very great depth, it might be good policy to seek it
in a stratum still nearer its rocky home. So down he penetrated,
regardless of the 'fine show' of oil that presented itself by the way,
until at the depth of five hundred feet in the rock, a vein of mingled
gas and oil was reached that literally forced the boring implements from
the well. This sudden exodus of the implements was followed by a steady
stream of petroleum that rose to the height of sixty or seventy feet
above the surface, and was occasionally accompanied by a roaring noise
like the Geysers of Iceland.

Here was a new feature in oil operations. The idea of flowing wells for
the production of petroleum, once inaugurated, was seized upon with
avidity. There was not only a spontaneous yield, but a yield in enormous
quantities. And so a pumping well was voted a slow institution, and all
parties on Oil Creek renewed the operation of boring, and, at about the
depth of the first flowing well, obtained almost uniformly like success.

These flowing wells were almost as difficult to govern and regulate as
was Pegasus of old. They 'played fantastic tricks' when least expected,
throwing the oil over the workmen, and in one case, when the vein of
petroleum was suddenly opened, setting fire to the machinery, and
destroying the lives of those in the vicinity. The enormous yield of
these wells had the effect of bringing down the price of petroleum to so
low a figure that pumping wells were at once closed. They could not be
worked with profit. Hence almost the entire oil business has, for the
present at least, been confined to the valley of Oil Creek. The yield
from the flowing wells varies from fifty to two thousand barrels per
day. This, as may readily be supposed, involves the loss by wast