territory, from which manufacturing works in Beaver Falls and Rochester,
some twenty-eight miles west of Pittsburg, receive their supply.
Proceeding with the circle we are drawing in imagination around
Pittsburg, we pass from the west to the southwest without finding gas in
any considerable quantity, until we reach the Butler gas field,
equidistant from Pittsburg on the northwest, with Washington county wells
on the southwest. Proceeding now from the Butler field to the Allegheny
River, we reach the Tarentum district, still about twenty miles from
Pittsburg, which is supplying a considerable portion of the gas used.
Drawing thus a circle around Pittsburg, with a radius of fifteen to
twenty miles, we find four distinct gas-producing districts. In the city
of Pittsburg itself several wells have been bored; but the fault before
mentioned seems to extend toward the center of the circle, as salt water
has rushed in and rendered these wells wholly unproductive, though gas
was found in all of them.

I spent a few days very pleasantly last autumn driving with some friends
to the two principal fields, the Murraysville and the Washington county.
In the former district the gas rushes with such velocity through a 6-inch
pipe, extending perhaps 20 feet above the surface, that it does not
ignite within 6 feet of the mouth of the pipe. Looking up into the clear
blue sky, you see before you a dancing golden fiend, without visible
connection with the earth, swayed by the wind into fantastic shapes, and
whirling in every direction. As the gas from the well strikes the center
of the flame and passes partly through it, the lower part of the mass
curls inward, giving rise to the most beautiful effects gathered into
graceful folds at the bottom--a veritable pillar of fire. There is not a
particle of smoke from it. The gas from the wells at Washington was
allowed to escape through pipes which lay upon the ground. Looking down
from the roadside upon the first well we saw in the valley, there