La sentinelle de Thibodaux. [volume] (Thibodaux, La.) 1861-1866, 1865-09-09
AT7THE OIL WELLS.
! THE GREAT FRASER OR UNITED
3 Stairs WELL.

4 g E -
rHE GREAT FRASER or UNITED
| n Stairs WELL.
hoHS f.Tsyluts Lsstsss y lie Chicago Journal
The first oil I aver saw issuing from
Fan eyelet hole "of its own accord" was
i'm the bed of the valley at Oil City, and
owned by j. G.. Pease & Co., of Illinois.
| II was then a kind of pocket-pistof among
wells, a double barreled weapon-to-wit. /:
about eighty gallons . day-and from the
iron tube a green and bilious little stream
| fell into the tank, and it Was as great a
wonder as If it he'd been a greater steam.
1t wes my first glimpse of q harpooned
| world making o sahale of itself. But some
times they are big enough to be grand.
You pass along Main street in the town
whence 1 am now writing, descend q hill
into the bed of the creek. Derricks sur
lfound you ; houses propose to "take you
in" :dwellings ask you to drink ; Bacchus
and tobacco bestride the same barrel;
Eyou work your way amid Wagons and
hoorsemen and crowds on foot ; the valley
Ills hung with canopy of smoke the air is
fc6mposed Of o little oxygen, 9 little by
dfOgen and a great deal of petroleum
tgas1;.you have, left a city of houses and
Fare entering a city of tanks ; a town OF
dirty looking rotundity.a A sign, nailed
10 trees, spans the road-"No Smoking"
in q moment you stand IN: front Of
the great Fraser or United States we'll,
but all you see is a rooted Enclosure,
about which thirty tanks are clustered,
and such pieces Of cooperage as make
YOU. think that Puck might have been
prince of the coopers that made them,
for the fellow who could. put q girdle
round the earth in forty minutes" might
have hoped those barrels. / am tempted
to perpetrate a pitifuI pun and call them
staving wonders. Fancy this family of
tanks large enough for thirty families
with souls in them large enough, any
one of them, to dine your friends or hold
Ia meeting or deploy a small Circus;
seventy-two feet in circumference and
sixteen in height, grouped around an in
significant hole that could not shelter o
wood chuck. A timid friend cautioned
me. on my departure for 0ildom not to
step into a well, as if he said, take care
Hest you tumble into q key hole Nearing
the inclo sure you find a man at the foot
of a flight of stairs who demands not
your money but your matches. While
feeling in your pockets with unwonted
diligence for a stray lucifer you are all
at once impressed with the "touchyn re-
gion you are entering, and when you be-
gin TO think about breathing an atmos-
phere SO irritable, have reason to be glad,
Eperhaps for ,thefrst time in your life, that
There is no fire in your eye. But up you
go under the roof, and .lpOk down upon
Il ii 1Io ....A orror 49, pa&osa
you is a two-inch iron tube, leading from
the depths of the earth and extending
ovet-a tank. AS you enter, it IL flowing
lit is always flowing but in ON instant
there is a rushing sound, q trembling Of
the tubo. and a great gush of oil, some
times projected quite acrbss the tank /; 1t
beats like the artery of a drowsy levia-
than you are behoiding the pulsation of
the "United States''w well. The oil in the
reservoirs turns chameleon as the light
happens to fall on it now it is an ocean
ofink in which editors have been drowned
now it is a little breadth of "Oman's
green water" and now il is huge barrels
of rainbows. From its surface rise wisps
of grayish-w white steam-gas-and you
can hardly divest yourself Of the notion
that it is not, unless you venture q finger
in it. The air seems sitting; you fancy
you are a little dizzy, but you are told
that these exhalations are very wholesome,
though you rather think not, else how
camaatheY to be left out of the aerial
manufacture? There Is . little touch q
the grand about that we'll no swaying
= walking beam,a no plunging rod, no
painting engine, but just a tube, silent
+and empty as a stethoscope, inserted in
1.-THE breast Of the earth, and 10 ! the throb
of the heart comes sisibly and audibly to
the surface, eight hundred barrels a day.
Since the. first days of January last, night
and day without ceasing, has that we'll
pulsated on. You descend the stairs, re-
Fceive the matches you had "stood and
Delivered and get a nsonthful of free,
fresh air. You wonder that the tide of
pilgrims necessarily tending hither sub
sides; you no long er discredit the state
ment that a thousand and seventy-four
shorsemen have passed beneath that anti
Ifumigating sign in a single day.
STATE OF LOUISIANA. PARISH OF
ts# ss45s LAFOURCHE.H saSt7a /