A more distant foreign field, which is gaining importance in the eyes of the world, is that of the Dutch Indies in the Far East. There has been considerable oil production in Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, in the development of which the services of American experts have been enlisted and indeed it may be said that the petroleum industry has done a great deal to make world-citizens or cosmopolites of many good Americans. Japan’s connection with oil is ancient and it has its own industry at Echigo; but like China, which also worked deposits of oil in prehistoric days, it is a large importer of American petroleum products, especially illuminating oils. The American travelling in remote parts of Asia is often reminded of home on seeing the tin containers that have crossed the Pacific from this country. Returning to this continent we find that the Mexican oil fields have come into prominence more rapidly than those in any other land, for there the industry has existed only since 1907. The Mexican pools now rank after the United States as the second largest producing area in the world. Most of the latter-day sensations in the matter of petroleum have been provided by Mexico, where both American and British capitalists have acquired large interests. In 1908 the “Dos Bocas” gusher in Northern Vera Cruz was drilled. At a depth of 1,800 feet gas was encountered which blew out the drilling apparatus and presently, through a fissure which developed under the boiler room of the drilling plant, an eight-inch column of oil was spouting hundreds of feet into the air. Becoming ignited it burned for fifty-eight days, producing a column of flame a thousand feet in height and fifty feet in diameter. The well then began to produce hot salt water and is still producing probably a million barrels of salt water per day. In 1910 another great gusher, the “Potrero del Llano” was struck but fire was fortunately averted, and the daily flow was estimated at 125,000 barrels. Production on so magnificent a scale has never been known in any other part of the world. Before this well went to salt water, in 1919, it had produced more than 100,000,000 barrels of oil. Another Latin American republic which has developed a very important oil industry in recent years is Peru, and it is supposed that other parts of South America will yield their riches in the future.