A STARTLING PREDICTON.

Colonist, Volume XXX, Issue 5023, 5 October 1887, Page 4

A STARTLING PREDICTON.

Sat*- the Cincinnati • Commercial Gazette.': Two hundred years ago in ' China there was ■ jobt such a craze about natural gas as we have in thia country to-day. Gas wells were sunk with as much vim and vigor as the Celestials were capable of, but owing to a gaa explosion .that killed several ■millions of people and tore up and destroyed a large dittricfc of. country leaving a large inland sea, known on the maps as Lake Foo. Chang, the boring of any more gas wells was then and there prohibited by law.^ It seems, according to the Chinese history, that many largo and heavy pressure gas wells were etruck, and in some districts wells were Bu&k quite near to each other. Gas was lighted - as.soon as struck, as is done ia this country. It is Btated that, one well with its unusual pressure, by induction or back iraoghfc, pulled down into the earth the burning gas of a smaller well, resulting jn; a dreadful explosion of a large district, destroying the inhabitants thereof. Lake Foo Chang rests, on - fhis district. The same catastrophe J3 imminent in this 'country unless the laws restrict further developments, in boring so many wells. Should, a similar: explosion occur, there will be such an upheaval as will . dwarf the most terrible earthquakes ever,known. The country along the . gas belt, from. Toledo through Ohio, Indiana aad Kentucky, will be ripped tip to the depth of 1200' to 1500 feet and .flopped over like a pancake, leaving a chasm-through which the waters of Lake Erie will come howling down, filling the Ohio a.nd Mississippi valleyj and blotting them out for .: -■ - ever,