The air was loaded with the smell of petroleum.

Derricks were thrown up on every side; drills were at work piercing the earth; villages were starting among stumps still fresh at the top, as if their trees were cut but yesterday; rough men in high boots were ranging the country; the depots were glutted with portable Steam-engines and all sorts of mining machinery, and there was but one subject of conversation.

Some new well had begun to flow with hundreds of barrels of petroleum _per diem_.

Some new man had made a fortune.

Farmers, who had barely been able to get a living from their sterile acres, had become millionaires.