The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-24 00:00:00

directions to such and such wells or such and such
companies, all followed by the warning, "No
smoking,"— as if one required a warning where the
pools and ditches were filled with petroleum, and
the gas escaping from the wells and ground poisoned
the air and made everything near and far flicker
and wave as though seen through the exhalations
of a hot stove. Almost a mile of such a road is
passed on Cherry Run—oil in tanks, in the water,
in the mud ; streets and clumps of greasy silent
derricks ; where all is oil, soot, or gas, where the
trees are as black and oily as the derricks, and the
very grass looks as if it had been grown in a
chimney. Then comes a space where everything
is busy, where the creak creak of the busy walking
beam pumping oil is constant, or only mixed with
the dull intermittent rush with which a flowing
well alternately gurgles and spurts its stream of gas
and oil into its black vats. Here some wells are
being deepened, some fresh ones bored. New der-
ricks, with the characteristic inscription of " The
Infernal Regions, oil, or China," show the real,
or, as it may chance, assumed, determination of
its adventurers to go as far as two out of the
three named places ; and close by stands the charred
remains of one which has been burnt by a gas explo-
sion or wrenched away andbroken by a flood. Then,
again, an interval of shanty huts, the muddy inha-
bitants of which may be teamsters or oil princes for
all one can tell outwardly. Then come more deserted
derricks, mixed with eating saloons and whisky
shops ; then a mud-hole, then a ford, and then a
dangerous bridge, made of rough trees felled so as
to drop across some deeper run than usual ; then a
short turn into the cool black forest, the shade of
which is grateful beyond expression, now when the
mid-day sun strikes down into these close valleys
with almost tropical heat ; then a sudden turn, an
impracticable bridge, and you are out again into the
mud, among towns of derricks, shut up agencies,
offices of exploded companies, vats of oil, broken
machinery, felled trees, rows of overladen waggons,
and groups of muddy horsemen. If your readers
can imagine what such a route is, through a still,
hot, picturesque, but greasy, black valley, reeking
with gas, heavy with soot, the trees cut down to
make room for derricks, the derricks toppled over to
make room for vats of oil, abandoned and shut-up
works and wooden villages alternating with shanty
hamlets, where all is in a fever of work and excite-
ment, and then mix the whole up with constant evi-
dences of the ravages of flood and fire, and the
roughest experiences of backwoodsman life, they will
then perhaps have sonic idea, though but a faint one,
of the ride from Oil City through Cherry Run. It,
in fact, resembles nothing under the sun but itself,
Petroleum Centre, Pithole City, and one or two
other similar places in these regions. On Cherry
Run our party turn aside to visit the Reed Well on
Blood Farm. It was one of the best flowing wells
in this district, but its flow fell from 500 barrels
down to 30, then to 10, then to two, when the floods
came and damaged the works, and it was believed
to have " gin out," and not worth the trouble of re-
pair. Fortunately for themselves, its proprietors
thought differently. They " reamed" the well—
that is to say, enlarged the diameter of its bore
from 4in. to Gin., and took it from 500 ft. to GOOft.
in depth. The cost was trifling, the return im-
mensely profitable, for since then the .Reed Well
has flowed 200 barrels a day with a steadiness which
augurs well for its continuance, if anything can be
augured or predicated from the eccentricities of the
oil regions. Here it is the rule of contrarieties. On
1 the same half acre where one man makes a colossal
fortune ten men lose theirs. The universal experi-
-1 ence has been that it does not pay to ream out or
I deepen wells, yet the formidable exception which
may prove the rule is every now and then turning
up, and the exceptions are so formidable, in point
of profit, as to lead scores to their ruin in trying to
restore yields that are really dry. It is just as I
said, double or quits with the man who has lost
$lO,OOO in bad wells why he should not risk the other
$lO,OOO in a venture that maymake him an oil prince
lor a teamster. In this strange country either posi-
' tion if it came would be accepted as a matter of
course, though, naturally, the former is much pre-
ferred, and more generally aimed at. Many of the
wells round here have been thus restored by reaming
and deepening, but to a far greater proportion the
money spent in deepening or reaming out has
brought nothing whatever, though they may some
time hence pay all this and give thousands of dollars
profit daily by one of those unexpected freaks of
nature with regard to oil wells—freaks which upset
calculations every day, ruining the best and most
hopeful enterprises, and as often making what
are meant as the most unblushing swindles to induce
1 strangers to invest prove sources of enormous for-
t tunes to those who should have been their dupes.
In front of the window where I write the
" Run" opens rather wide, and the scene beneath
in the valley is one of curious activity, for many of
the wells here are still, for the time at least, pro-
fitably busy, and, above all, the great stream of oil
traffic down from Pithole is passing in groups of
teams. Some in the mud, some, as the least of the
two evils, fairly keeping the bed of the stream. Close
by is a derrick partly burnt and partly blown up.
It still totters over what was once a good well. But
the engine one fine day blew up much to the sur-
prise of those not near it, and possibly not less to
the surprise of those who were ; but who, unfortu-
nately, were leftin a condition which prevented them
saying anything about the matter. At all events, the
engine burst, knocked down the derrick, lit the well,
and after various other mischiefs landed itself in
the front garden of a cottage shanty, where it still
lies on its back like a dead elephant. There would be
nothing so unusual in all this as to deserve recount-
ing but for the fact that the spot where the perturbed
boiler at last found a resting-place is in a little patch
of ground before a two-storied shanty, which four
years ago was at once the wonder and admiration of
this wild district. It was built by the owner of the
Tar and Blood Farms. Farms of some 500 acres of
half-cleared poor clay land, and the two-storied
erection, which cost more than $l,OOO, was four
years ago thought " quite a place"—the Chatsworth,
Badminton, or Eaton-hall of Pennsylvanian hills.
The value of the united farms, including buildings,
clearings, and improvements, was then $50,000.
When the oil fever arose, and farms were parted
with for $l,OOO an acre, the owner of Blood and Tar
Farms was not in a hurry to realise, but waited till
prices rose. In the proper time he sold the Tar
Farm for $780,000, and the Blood Farm for nearly
$2,000,000, or about £500,000 in all. Whether
this large sum has paid its purchasers or not I
cannot say. All I know for a fact is, that the
fortunate vendor does not now live in his new-
built shanty, but prefers renting palaces elsewhere.
Close by this farm is that of the Widow NI 'Clintock.
Her wretched, half-scratched land was valuable
enough for oil. She got a very large sum for it,
• which, with the characteristic business habits of a
poor old country
widow, she would receive in no-
thing but greenbacks, which were accordingly paid
to her in a bundle, as big as a bolster. She hoarded
them, still living amid the noise of derricks and the
gas of wells in the shingle-hut.in which she had for
years been accustomed to dwell, till one night her
petroleum lamps exploded, lighting her and her
woodenhouse at once, and from the sudden fire
neither she nor her greenbacks were saved, nothing,
in fact, but some $BO,OOO which she had been per-
suaded to invest in United States' securities. All
Petrolia is full of anecdotes like the Se—some well-
authenticated as those I have told—some which are
equally astonishing, but rather more doubtful.
Among the latter let us hope we may class the last
dreadful rumour, that refined petroleum is now
sought for as an important ingredient in the manu-
facture of cheap champagne. Happily in these
regions we get nothing weaker than whisky.

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