The oil region of Western Pennsylvania is the portion of oil-producing territory that now occupies the largest share of attention. It is confined principally to the valley of Oil Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany River, which it enters at a point about sixty miles south from Lake Erie. It is true that oil wells are successfully worked on the banks of the Alleghany for some distance above and below the mouth of Oil Creek: still the county of Venango has monopolized almost the whole number of oil-producing wells in this region. There are some strange facts, that point to a history all unwritten save in some few brief sentences in pits and excavations, of oil operations along the Oil Valley. These detached fragments, like the remains of the Sibylline Oracles, but cause us to regret more earnestly the loss of the volumes which contained the whole. A grand and wonderful history has been that of this American continent, but it has never been graven in the archives of time. The actors in its bygone scenes have passed away in their shadowy grandeur, leaving but dim footprints here and there to tell us they have been, and cause us to wonder at the mystery which veils their record, and to muse upon the evanescent glory of man's earthly destiny. Along the valley of Oil Creek are clear traces of ancient oil operations. Over sections embracing hundreds of acres in extent, the entire surface of the land has, at some remote period of time, been excavated in the form of oblong pits, from four by six to six by eight feet in size. These pits are oftentimes from four to five feet still in depth, notwithstanding the action of rain and frost during the lapse of so many years. They are found in the oil region, and over the oil deposits, and in no other locality, affording unmistakable evidence of their design and use. The deeper pits appear to have been cribbed up at the sides with rough timber, in order to preserve their form and render them more available for the design in view. Upon the septa that divide them, and even in the pits themselves, trees have grown up more than one and a half feet in diameter, indicating an antiquity antedating the earliest records of civilized life in this region. For centuries has this treasure been affording intimations of its presence. Before Columbus had touched these western shores was it gathered here, in this valley, as an article of utility or luxury, by the processes of design and labor, and with the idea of traffic and emolument. By whom were these excavations planned and these pits fashioned, that tell of the pursuit of wealth so many centuries ago? Let the mighty dead, that are slumbering in our valleys, and the remains of whose fortifications and cities are spread out all over the great West, in magnificence as vast and gorgeous as the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, arise and speak, for they alone of mortals can tell!