refined, it made a splendid illuminant, besides yielding certain
byproducts, such as paraffin and naphtha, which had a great
commercial value. So far, Bissell's enterprise seemed to promise
success, yet the great problem still remained: how could he
obtain this rock oil in amounts large enough to make his
enterprise a practical one? A chance glimpse of Kier's label,
with its picture of an artesian well, supplied Bissell with his
answer. He at once sent E. L. Drake into the oil-fields with a
complete drilling equipment, to look, not for saltwater, but for
oil. Nothing seems quite so obvious today as drilling a well into
the rock to discover oil, yet so strange was the idea in Drake's
time that the people of Titusville, where he started work,
regarded him as a lunatic and manifested a hostility to his
enterprise that delayed operations for several months. Yet one
day in August, 1859, the coveted liquid began flowing from
"Drake's folly" at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day.

Because of this performance Drake has gone down to fame as the
man who "discovered oil." In the sense that his operation made
petroleum available to the uses of mankind, Drake was its
discoverer, and his achievement seems really a greater one than
that of the men who first made apparent our beds of coal, iron,
copper, or even gold. For Drake really uncovered an entirely new
substance. And the country responded spontaneously to Drake's
success. For anything approaching the sudden rush to the
oil-fields we shall have to go to the discovery of gold in
California ten years before. Men flocked into western
Pennsylvania by the thousands; fortunes were made and lost almost
instantaneously. Oil flowed so plentifully in this region that it
frequently ran upon the ground, and the "gusher," which threw a