nce is
therefore fair, that for purposes of trade the production of oil was not
desirable in so large quantities as indicated by these excavations. The
same reasons would hold good in relation to its use in the religious
ceremonies of the Indians. It could be used only in limited quantities,
from the want of convenient receptacles for its retention. Besides, we
doubt whether the Indians were sufficiently devout to resort to such
labor and pains in religious worship.

Reference is sometimes made to a letter said to have been written by the
commander of Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg) to General Montcalm, describing a
grand scene of fire worship on the banks of Oil Creek, where the whole
surface of the creek, being coated with oil, was set on fire, producing
in the night season a wonderful conflagration. But there is room for the
suspicion that this account is apocryphal. Such scenes as are there
described have been witnessed on Oil Creek since the beginning of the
modern oil trade. During the continuance of several accidental
conflagrations, the scene has been awfully grand and impressive. It has
been strongly suggestive of the conflagration of the last day, when

'The lightnings, barbed, red with wrath,
Sent from the quiver of Omnipotence,
Cross and recross the fiery gloom, and burn
Into the centre!--burn without, within,
And help the native fires which God awoke,
And kindled with the fury of His wrath.'

But this was when thousands of barrels of petroleum had been stored up
in vats, and when the combustible fluid was spouting from the wells at
the rate of many hundred barrels per day. Before the present deep wells
were bored, oil was not produced in sufficient quantities to cause such
a conflagration, and there was never seen upon the creek a stratum of
the fluid of such consistency as to be inflammable.

The remains of the once powerful confederacy of Indians known as the Six
Nations still linger in Western Pennsylvania, in a region not very
remote from Oil Creek, but they can throw no light upon the origin of
these pits. In regard to their history, they can give no more
information than they can concerning the mounds and fortifications,
ruined castles, and dismantled cities, that tell us of a once glorious
past, of a mysterious decadence, and of the utter vanity of all earthly
glory.

There are men still living in the oil valley, who were on terms of
familiar intimacy with Cornplanter, a celebrated chief