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

282 All About Inventions in the big country across the seas. To the American it represented all the difference between comfort and inconvenience, especially if he belonged to the agri- cultural community, and thus was compelled to live somewhat remote from the towns and cities. Under such conditions life during the winter months was far from being endurable. The long hours of dark- ness were rather palling. Whereas the town-dwellers were able to benefit from the convenience offered by gas-lighting, the rural dweller was forced to be con- tent with the semi-gloom shed by a flickering tallow candle or rushlight. But Young’s discovery offered a means for changing all this. By distilling paraffin from petroleum, which was to be found in plenty throughout the State of Pennsylvania, the farmer living in the country would be brought more on terms of equality with the townsfolk. He would be able to sit at night in a brilliant soft yellow light. The fact that the United States was rich in this fluid mineral was only too evident from the number of abandoned oil-workings which were to be found, many of which had been exploited in the long and dim distant past. The Indians knew about petroleum, and were in the habit of flocking to these oil-yielding holes for treatment by the medicine men, who had cunningly learned something about the curative pro- perties of petroleum for certain maladies. At Seneca, in New York County, where flowed a petroleum spring, the oil was bottled and sold readily under the title of Seneca Oil. In some places the oil welled to the surface in the manner of a spring of water. At other spots, where traces were observed, holes or shallow pits