That
seems a long period of time, one hundred and fifty years, but it was only
a little longer ago that a French explorer saw the first signs of coal in
that valley along the Illinois, and, as the scientist has intimated, there
is no reason why we should not expect a future of thousands of years for
the coal that has been thousands or millions of years in the making.
The petroleum and natural-gas fields are also nearly all in that valley or
on its edges. (I think it was in the narrow valley of La Belle Riviere,
which Pere Bonnecamp found so dark on that Celoron expedition, that this
oil of the rocks was first found.) [Footnote: Natural gas and burning
springs were early known to the French pioneers and Jesuits who penetrated
the Iroquois country, as the following extracts show:
"It was during this interval that, in order to pass away the time, I went
with M. de LaSalle, under the escort of two Indians, about four leagues
south of the village where we were staying, to see a very extraordinary
spring.
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