The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1882-10-11
The Pennsylvania Oil Fields.

Following everybody else, got q
buggy, after some difficulty, and started
for the scene of excitement. 1t was al
most opposite the town over the river,
but it was roundabout way of six
miles to reach it. The livery man adj
monished me to keep the horse out of
the oil in the road, as it would take the
hair off. This road was wild, rocky,
crooked wicked road, and was marked
by greasy pipes here and there, which
seemed to creep down from the noun
tain like endless, Shiny blacksnakes-
through the bushes, under the slender
maiden-hair ferns, beneath blackberry
briar and the tangled wire-grass, among
the gnarled scrub oaks and the rich
golden finally plunging under the
road and disappearing over the bluff on
the other side. Far below they connect
ed with the great iron tanks beside the
railroad track. These iron pipes have
been connected with the seaboard re-
Gently, and the pump stations, at con
venient distances, force the oil to grease
its own way to the eastern refinery and
places of shipment. When | reached
the top of the bluff saw the tall der
ricks dotting the fields on either side,
and the smoke and steam, and walking
beam told of activity. 1t was where
the road beyond was blocked up by
horses and vehicles that the attention
was directed. There was a small farm
house on the left. In tho family garden
patch gang of men were busily at
work putting up an immense derrick,
In the family barnyard one had just
been erected, and workingmen were get
ting in the machinery. In the corn-held
beyond the garden stood a derrick about
ninety feet high. There was another
one Just like it this side, in the oats,
and this derrick was black with oil from
bottom to top. This was the big well,
where the strike was made yesterday,
and the blackened derrick was the mark
of the oil-spout that shot eighty feet in
to the air so Unexpectedly.
NV horse in fence corner, plunged
through the oat-stubble to join the look
ers-on, and suddenly found myself over
my shoe tops in oil-mud. The flow had
flooded the whole neighborhood and
left it sticky and disagroeable. There
was curious scene here. The corn
was trampled in the mud, the oat
shocks thrown down, the fences were
half destroyed. On the ground were
strewn ends of worn-out ropes, joints of
iron pipe, rails, and odds and ends Of
rude machinery. There was furnace
and steam boiler mounted between the
corn rows, and the stalks wilted with
the heat or were trampled under foot
No one noticed so small n thing. The
place looked like q battlefield where %
battery had been worked. Tho ma
chinery was STILL There is no need of
machinery. The oil is glad enough to
come up and be run in. The pipes
simply connect with the casing of the
well and run Off there through the corn,
where they empty into two great tanks
You can hear the roar of the escaping
gas as it blows of the dark oil into the
tanks, now ccasing, now gurgling, now
making "A rushing noise like the escap-
ing steam of locomotive. You can
climb up tho little ladder and look over
the top of the half-hlled tank into the
dark, creamy, sickening oil within. -.
., v,~..s1 Lsttay 10 PhiIacsss!!:.:a.s-: IL. ..