The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-18 00:00:00

could have been purchased easily at $l5 an acre,
farm buildings and all. A few speculators who
trusted in its " surface indications" of stinking oil
upon its muddy water-courses, and who humbly
staked their little "pile" upon their acre or two of
forest land, became a byword in Oil Creek, Cherry
Run, and Titusville. This is not a year ago. Pit-
hole is now the oil capital of Petrolia, and $BO,OOO
is the price of a half-acre freehold on poor lands
which less than 12 months ago could have been got
for $l5 an acre, with their fences and clearings. In
the face of such facts as these—in the face of the
wild fever and excitement around—in the face of
the perpetual efforts made to induce me, a stranger,
to advance only $lOO in a well belonging to the
" Wild Cat Company," or the " Universal Fortune
Company," when " they can't get enough barrels,"
" made $150,000 in a week," " big thing for the
New Yorkers," &c.,—l am inclined to think that
the oil fever has not yet died out, and never will as
long as men can make great fortunes by buying
good oil wells cheap, or other men can make greater
fortunes by selling bad oil wells dear.
I have already made one effort to reach Pithole
from this city, but was obliged to give up the at-
tempt, as the floods were out, roads had been
washed away, bridges destroyed, and the fords, of
course, rendered utterly impassable. Next time I
hope to be more successful, and to be able to say as
well what floods mean in Petrolia, where the only
two great dangers to be dreaded are fire and flood,
which both occasionally assert their rights of de-
struction in the most tremendous and appalling
manner. Ad interim, however, there is plenty to
be seen here. Oil City is about 600 miles from New
York, in the most westerly portion of Pennsyl-
vania. It is reached by the New York and
Erie as far as Salamanca. Thence the rest of
the route is entirely by the Atlantic and Great
Western—a railway almost every shilling of the
stocks in which are held in England, and which
from its oil business alone is rapidly becoming one
of the most lucrative investments in this country.
A branch line from Meadville strikes out from
the main trunk of the Great Atlantic road and
leads direct to this city, the very heart of oildom.
The traffic on this branch line is so enormous
and so incessant that oil freights by train are
often as much as two months in arrear of the
time fixed for their departure. Leaving Meadville
the line keeps close alongside a branch of the Alle-
gheny, known as French Creek, so named from
the many fights on it when General Du-
quesne, acting under advice from Montcalm, was
trying to wrest this part of Pennsylvania from the
English. The greater part of the still wild country
was then held by the Sennaca Indians, and Sennaca
oil, as petroleum was then called, was gathered and
sold by them as an absolute specific for many
diseases, especially rheumatism and consumption—
' charms which the oil possesses to this day, though
its greater charm, against a more general evil—want
of money—have just now cast its medicinal virtues
Ilrather into the shade. It is impossible to imagine
a more picturesque country than the valley along
which French Creek winds to Oil Creek. Your
readers will easily appreciate its beautiful cha-
racter when I say that it closely resembles the
valley of " Betws-y-Coed," through which tourists
in North Wales ma :e their way from Conway to
Snowdon. All, however, is utterly wild and uncul-
tivated, and only rarely and at long intervals are
signs of life to be seen among the beautifully wooded
hill and bluffs which shut in every turn of the valley.
Here and there a patch of gaunt-looking trees,
girded and left to die with their dry leafess-looking
arms stark and white like skeletons of trees, show
where a clearing hasbegun ; but this is all. Occa-
sionally comes a little patch of farm land with its
trees overborne with heavy crops of fruit ; but gene-
rally trees, fruit, farmhouse, and everything have
been removed from cleared land, and their place occu-
pied by the eternal derrick and steam-engine boring
foroil. Even where little farms have not been taken,
they are not the less deserted, for all who have
health, strength, and money sufficient—which means
all therural population of these districts—make their
way to this great centre, and thence radiate to all
parts of Petrolia, from Titusville and Cherry Run to
Pithole. In the peculiar language of Oil City all the
lands along French Creek are considered " dry
territory," though one is at a loss to see why it should
be so accounted, except comparatively and in the
presence of the gigantic flowing wells at Pithole and
Cherry Run. For the air round French Creek is
unpleasantly redolent of the strong garlic-like pun-
gent smell of petroleum, the river itself is blotched
all over with large, rough, irridiscent spots of float-
ing oil. The pools and ditches along its bank are
covered thickly with its green, sparkling slime : the
very mud is thick with it, like brown paint, and
even the trees and brooks are greasy. Yet the fiat
from the oil smellers and diviners has gone forth,
and French Creek is " dry territory," which means
that for the present adventurers had better try loca-
lities where flowing wells may be struck, which, as
r at Pithole, are actually now giving their fortunate
owners $20,000 a day, and are likely to continue
doing so for some time—possibly for two or three
years. The Oil Creek Railway branch stops some
half a mile or so short of this city proper. The dis-
tance may seem trifling, but half a mile seems a good
deal in this wild region, where the trains are not
allowed to come further on in case of their fires or
sparks exploding the petroleum gas which forms the
atmosphere, or where, in fact, if all parties were
ever so much inclined that the truck should advance,
there is not yet room for it. All along the last few
miles to Oil City the derricks have been becoming
thicker and thicker ; the incessant walking beam
which pumps the oil more and more active, the
roads worse, and the painful scenes of overladen
teams struggling through mud up to their shoulders
more and more frequent. The smell of the
gas, though at first not very unpleasant, soon
gets painfully strong, and at last most decidedly
nauseating. It is said here far and wide that the
smell is good for weak lungs, which it certainly may
be, though its effect on strong lungs for the first
day or two is absolutely suffocating, and few can
bear to remain long amid the white steam-like
miasma of a flowing well. The train, as I have said,
stops at little more than half a mile from Oil City
proper. The station is a mere rough shanty, yet,
rough as it is, it may be called almost a gilded
saloon in comparison with its crowd of roughest and
most muddy occupants. Mud in Petrolia is suffi-
ciently fluid to find its own level like water, and to
that level to bring all in Oil City, man or beast.
Mud and oil, one or the other, or both combined,
reign supreme here. As you enter towards this city
' the mouth of the valley opens out a little as French
Creek or Venango River turns wider into the delta
which forms Oil Creek. In the cuttings of the rail-
way through the rock can be seen the petrified re-
mains of what were once dense forests of trees, with
their stone stems projecting through the soft layers
of shale. These trees of a bygone age lie as thick as
they could well have fallen. The roughness of their
bark, their annular and radiating lines are still to be
seen and traced through the soil for 40 feet and more
below what is now the surface of the earth. No one
however minds these things, or the most extraordi-
nary mineralogical or geological facts which are
every day brought to light by the shafts of oil. No-
thing is wanted here but oil, and with the presence
of that all questions are answered. This city, as a.
place of four years' growth or less, is one of the most
extraordinary works of Petrolia. In no other place
in the world have I seen such evidence of apathy
and energy, of sloth and industry, of wealth and
squalor. Only the squalor, however, or what in
England would be called such, is a superficial
aspect which all wear. The whole population is
ragged, muddy, and dirty ; but the whole popula-
tion is without an exception more or less thriving,
and, as a general rule, more or less rich. No one
lives in this sea of oily mud but those who are mak-
ing money fast, and all who live here know that the
oldest tatters are good enough for the filth amid
-which they dwell. Thus the two things come to be
inseparable in the public mind—that all who live in
oildom are ragged and dirty and all who live there
rich. About the immutable truth of the first part of
the proposition none who have ever been here can
entertain the smallest doubbt, andthe latter is not al
together devoid of a general accuracy. You land from
the cars in a perfect sea of mud—mud ofstnicoht depth, to b
tenacity, and slipperiness as I believe is
found in any part of the world. That at Balaclava,