THE FLAMING FOUNTAIN
In the state of Pennsylvania it is famous for its vast mineral wealth. Mountains of coal furnish fuel for the country; mines of iron afford ore for the furnaces, and material for a thousand articles of necessity and comfort; and then vast fountains of oil, hidden in the earth, pour out their treasures to furnish light for millions of dwellings in all parts of the world. Sometimes, instead of oil, gases burst forth from the earth, furnishing illumination enough for the entire region. In the town of Kane, on the summit of the Alleghany Mountains, near the Philadelphia and Erie Railway, there are noted sulfur and iron springs. Here, in the spring of 1878, a well was sunk more than two thousand feet into the mountain, which, though failing to strike oil, opened veins of-oil gas, enough to light a city. The well was finally abandoned, and the casings used in boring pulled out, when the hole rapidly filled with water, which poured in until the imprisoned gas accumulated beneath in sufficient quantities to lift the column of water over a third of a mile deep, when it blew the water out in a volume of spray over the top of the well.
From that time this process has been going on and at interval from six to ten minutes this vast body of gas, spray, and water blown out into the air in a column a hundred feet high. Sometimes the gas is set on fire, and the flame and spray intermingling, produce most beautiful rainbows in the night.
In the winter the water freezes, and after weeks of cold weather the frozen foam stands in a mass more than a hundred feet high, sparkling in the sunshine, a most magnificent spectacle, bright with a light that seems to remind one of the jasper walls of the city of God, the New Jerusalem.