All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

CHAPTER XIII The Age of Oil Half a century ago the State of Pennsylvania, although within easy reach of the Atlantic seaboard, was almost as unknown and as undeveloped as North-West Canada is to-day. The American steel age had not dawned, and what is now one of the most densely populated and humming reaches of territory forming part and parcel of the United States was virtually given over to agriculture and its kindred callings. Many of the streams which ambled lazily and meanderingly through picturesque dales were unnamed. Indeed, the majority were unknown, and the virgin forest stretched in an unbroken sea of green, brown, and gold from the water’s edge to the crests of the rolling hills and knolls. One day, early in 1859, a small party of men wandered into one of these dales. Evidently they were bent upon a search of considerable moment to themselves, because they tramped the little dale from end to end, probing the ground here, and reconnoitring the never-ending expanse of woodland from some- where else. Finally, they returned to the floor of the valley, which, owing to the wandering character of the little waterway, was somewhat wide and fairly flat, relieved here and there by ragged tree-clothed clumps. In due course the little gathering appeared to