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

The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania•

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
BLOOD FARM, CHERRY RUN, Oct 7.
Before I venture any further on my account of
these extraordinary regions I must give a rough and
very brief explanation of the way in which the oil
is got to the surface of the earth, without which
some terms which I shall have to use would be un-
intelligible to the majority of readers. When it has
been decided to sink a well the first operation is to
erect a derrick of rough timber over the spot. This
derrick is so called, like every other machine for
hoisting things in air, after a very experienced and
celebrated hangman, who once flourished here be-
fore the States were independent. The derrick used
at oil wells, however, bears not the slightest re-
semblance to the form which its name here implies.
It is a mere tall pyramid-shaped scaffolding, about
50ft. high, 10ft. square at the base, and some 4ft.
at the top—very similar, in fact, to the scaffoldings
used in erecting tall chimneys, or like the frame-
work of a wooden steeple to a little village church.
At the top of the derrick is a pulley wheel, over
which passes a rope, and to the end of this rope are
attached the heavy steel bars and drill for punching
a six-inch hole down to whatever depth may be
necessary to strike oil—generally 500 ft. or 600 ft.
At a short distance from the derrick is a shanty en-
gine-house, with an eight or ten horse power en-
gine, which by means of a lathe band drives a large
wooden wheel under the derrick, and this wheel is
connected by a crank motion with a stout bar of
timber about 16 feet long, balanced in the centre
like a scale beam. Thus, as the engine makes the
wheel revolve, the wheel in turn keeps the walking-
beam going up and down at each end like a quick
" see-saw," and the walking-beam is so made to
raise and lower the rope with the tools that drill
the hole till oil is struck, when, if the precious
liquid does not flow, the same motion of the beam
pumps it up. Of course as the tools are withdrawn
an iron tubing lines the hole they have made to
keep out the salt water, and its ingress up the tube
from the bottom is prevented by a leather bag filled
with linseed, the linseed in which swells immensely
as the water gets at it, and effectually closes the
aperture in that direction. Anything more tough
or apparently more efficient than the whole appa-
ratus it would be difficult to imagine. Everything
except the engine is got from the forest around, and
the cost of sinking a well seldom exceeds £l,OOO,
labour included. When to the derrick has been
added a little row of black, greasy, wooden vats as
large as small gasometers the whole machinery of
an oil well, which may be worth $2,000,000 or
$3,000,000, is complete. In this outline I have not
ventured on the difficulties of sinking wells, on the
utter uncertainty of finding oil, or, when found in
its greatest abundance, the utter uncertainty of its
continuance for a single week. All those extra-
ordinary contradictions which make this land and,
its oil yield a puzzle to geologists—an enigma which
baffles alike the most scientific theory and the most
extensive practical experience—must be discussed at
another time. It was essential, however, to explain
what a derrick and drill were—what, in fact, was
the machinery of an oil well—to make myself un- ,
derstood in what I shall have to say hereafter.
The track from Oil City to this place is the great
route along which all the products of its own region
and those of Tar Farm, Blood Farm, Egbert Farm,
and Pithole City incessantly pass. This road, if
such it may be called, is almost beyond description.
I saw a fair share of mud at Balaklava, but for
varying depths, varying tenacities, varying colours,
and universally nauseous odour there is nothing
to compare with the mud along this path. It is as
omnipresent as the derrick or the smell of gas, and
more it would be difficult to say in fewer words,
—dark black mud in Oil Creek, dark green, fetid-
smelling, repulsive mud in the vicinity of flowing
wells, yellow mud up Cherry Run, and so on in ever-
varying tints and depths, but in any case mud
everywhere. In some places, where it is so deep as
to be dangerous for horse or cart to venture, huge
masses of stone have been rolled from the hills above
to fill the gap, though this rough practice is, as '
might be expected, scarcely an improvement for
traffic purposes.. For a couple of miles or so above
Oil City such a path as I have spoken of winds round
the base of the hills, which shut in a narrow valley,
once beautifully picturesque, and the solitude of
which four years ago was only broken at night by
the deer from the hills coming down to drink at the
stream. Below on the river great rafts of oil are
being floated down, while against the current horses
up to their shoulders in water are wearily dragging
the scows full of empty barrels. Everywhere are seen
teams with their loads floundering through themud,
some hopelessly embedded and stopping scores be-
hind, some overturned or with horses thrown down
among the wreck of stones pitched in to fill the mud
gaps. Suddenly at a narrow turn the valley widens,
and the track leads down the ford across " Oil Crik,"
as it is called—a wide, shallow, swift mountain
stream, or rather river, which in fine weather the
horses can easily ford, but which after rain is impas-
sable. Riding carefully through this you come upon
an open flat-bottomed valley, and the like of the
scene it presents is not to be witnessed in any other
part of the world, save perhaps atPithole City. The
forest has been roughly cleared away, and where the
trees could not be felled they have been girdled, and
are white and dead, and the whole line of the clearing
on either side of the creek is simply one continuous
mass of derricks for three miles or more. They rise
as thick as the masts of our vessels on the Thames;
each has its engine house, each its big tanks—all
brown, all greasy, all emitting the same repulsive
odour. The mud comparatively ceases now, except
in deep runs or gullies ; but the road is not less diffi-
cult, for under beams or over beams one has to wind
carefully between the derricks, or cautiously skirt
the edge of huge wooden vats, some 12 or more feet
deep, sunk in the ground and filled with the ever-
present oil. Some wells are flowing, and the dirty
liquid, like thin molasses, comes gurgling with regu-
lar pulsations into the vats, giving off a gaslike steam.
Some are pumping salt water out of new wells, and
Pumping it out very hopefully, too ; for the rule is,
" no brine, no oil." Some are removing the water
from wells that have been drowned out by the flood
of last May, of which I shall have more to say by-
and-bye. Some are drilling new wells, but the great
majority stand idle and abandoned. In fact, the first
thing which strikes the visitor is the silence which,
comparatively speaking, prevailathroughout a region
filled with such unexampled evidences of bold and
pushing energy. Partly this desertion is caused by
the damage to the wells during the great floods to
which I have alluded, partly to the fact that some
of the wells are pumped out, and, more than all, to
the fact that every one is mad and wild to join the
"new rush" at Pithole City, where the wells are
teeming with a hitherto almost continuance abund-
ance. These, at least, are the causes assigned for
the comparative desertion of Cherry Run. Whether
they are sufficient to account for the abandonment
of what is said to be valuable property I cannot say,
though I very much doubt it, and almost incline to
the opinion that Cherry Run has for the present
been pumped out, or that at least men find more
profitable wells in Pithole. It is, however, very
hard to judge on these matters, because the oil
mania baffles all ordinary rules by which men's con-
duct may be judged. It is not alone speculation,
but is in all its features the purest gambling that
ever was adopted wholesale by any mercantile com-
munity. If it was done with cards or even
o n
time bargains, nine-tenths of those engaged in it,
like the Puritan New Englanders, would draw off ;
but, as the venture has to be carried out at a good
deal of personal fatigue and some unpleasant priva-
tion, it is thought legitimate, though the whole
thing is it heads or tails," " double or quits," from
first to last.
That many along Cherry nun have migrated to
Pithole is likely enough. I rode between hundreds
of yards of silent derricks, where tools, engines,
lathes, and all, had been left idle as they stood when
the tanks were full of oil as the well had last
pumped them, and where the rows of once busy
office-doors were shut and padlocked, with a rough
chalk notice, without date or hour, of " Gone to
Pithole." It was curious to see these streets of
greasy wooden towers left alone, to see the idle
wells flooding up water by fits and starts as the gas
Caine lip with a gurgling hiss, to read the endless

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 and broken 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 some 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 600 ft.
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
I oil
regions. Here it is the rule of contrarieties. On
the same half acre where one man makes a colossal
fortune ten men lose theirs. The universal experi-
ence has been that it does not pay to ream out or
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 may make him an oil prince
or 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-
I 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
I are meant as the most unblushing swindles to induce
1 strangers to invest prove sources of enormous for-
tunes to those who should have been their dupes.
In front of the windowwhere 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 .hem
saying anything about the matter. At all events, the
1 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
iboiler 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 Widowlll‘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
wooden house 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 these—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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