ch triumphant success as to attract much attention
to the experiment. Failures of supply, faults in the tubing, and
imperfect appliances for use at the mills combined to make the new fuel
troublesome. Seven years ago a company drilled for oil at Murraysville,
about eighteen miles from Pittsburg. A depth of 1,320 feet had been
reached when the drills were thrown high in the air, and the derrick
broken to pieces and scattered around by a tremendous explosion of gas.
The roar of escaping gas was heard in Munroville, five miles distant.
After four pipes, each two inches in diameter, had been laid from the
mouth of the well and the flow directed through them, the gas was
ignited, and the whole district for miles round was lighted up. This
valuable fuel, although within nine miles of our steel-rail mills at
Pittsburg, was permitted to waste for five years. It may well be asked
why we did not at once secure the property and utilize this fuel; but the
business of conducting it to the mills and there using it was not well
understood until recently. Besides this, the cost of a line was then more
than double what it is now; we then estimated that L140,000 would be
required to introduce the new fuel. The cost to-day does not exceed
L1,500 per mile. As our coal was not costing us more than 3s. per ton of
finished rails, the inducement was not in our opinion great enough to
justify the expenditure of so much capital and taking the risk of failure
of the supply. Two years ago men who had more knowledge of the oil-wells
than ourselves had sufficient faith in the continuity of the gas supply
to offer to furnish us with gas for a sum per year equal to that hitherto
annually paid for coal until the amount expended by them on piping had
been repaid, and afterward at half that sum. It took us about eighteen
months to recoup the gas company, and we are now working under the
permanent arrangement of one-half the previous cost of fuel on cars at
work. Since our success in the use of this new natural fuel at the rail
mills, parties still bolder have invested in lines of piping to the city
of Pittsburg, fifteen to eighteen miles from the wells. The territory
underlain with this natural gas has not yet been clearly defined. At the
principal field, that of Murraysville (from which most of the gas is
obtained to-day), I found, upon my visit to that interesting region last
autumn, that nine wells had been sunk, and were yielding gas in large
quantitie