They pay for the farm of this fountain about fifty crowns per annum. We were told by one Monsieur Beaushoste, a chymist in Montpelier, that petroleum was the very same with oil of jet, and not to be distinguished from it by color, taste, smell, consistency, virtues, or any other accident, as he had by experience found upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in several places, as at Berre, near Martague, in Provence; at Messina, in Sicily, etc." In Harris' "Voyages," published in 1764, an article on the empire of Persia thus refers to petroleum: "In several parts of Persia we meet with naphtha, both white and black; it is used in painting and varnish, and sometimes in physic, and there is an oil extracted from it which is applied to several uses. The most famous springs of naphtha are in the neighborhood of Baku, which furnish vast quantities, and there are also upward of thirty springs about Shamasky, both in the province of Schirwan. The Persians use it as oil for their lamps and in making fireworks, of which they are extremely fond, and in which they are great proficients." Petroleum has long been known to exist also in the northern part of Italy, the cities of Parma and Genoa having been for many years lighted with it. In the province of Szechuen, China, natural gas is obtained from beds of rock-salt at a depth of fifteen to sixteen hundred feet. Being brought to the surface, it is conveyed in bamboo tubes and used for lighting as well as for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt. It is asserted that the Chinese used this natural gas for illuminating purposes long before gas-lighting was known to the Europeans. Remembering the unprogressive character of Chinese arts and industries, there is ground for the belief that they may have been using this natural gas as an illuminant these hundreds of years. In the United States the existence of petroleum was known to the Pilgrim Fathers, who doubtless obtained their first information of it from the Indians, from whom, in New York and western Pennsylvania, it was called Seneka oil. It was otherwise known as "British" oil and oil of naphtha, and was considered "a sovereign remedy for an inward bruise."