Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-10-07
OIL WELLS OLD AND NEW
TOLD OF BY HASkIN
Daily Letter by Frederic ). Haskin

BURKESVILLE, KY, Oct. 4.-In
the history of the conversion of nat
IRA products into commodities use
full to man nothing seems stranger
than that petroleum was known by
ancients and known continuously
for u~ncounted centuries, yet did not
become an important commercial
product till fifty years ago.
From the Latin words "petro", a
rock, and "oleum", oil, we get the
name "petroleum"-"rock OIL. The
slime" spoken of in the Old Tesla
ment in the construction of the
Tower of Babel was partly evapo-
rated petroleum. The inhabitants
of Nineveh and Babylon used it as
a binder for brick as mortar is used
springs on the isla~d of Zante are
| mentioned by the Greek historian
| Herodotus.
Egyptians used petroleum in en-
balming and imported it from the
vicinity of the Dead Sea centuries
before the birth of Christ. Lamps
of the Temple of Jupiter were light
ed with oil from the springs of Agri-
| gentum on the island of Sicily.
Persians, Chinese, Japanese, used
it to a limited extent 5000 years ago.
The mound builders who preceded
the American Indians of the period
of Christopher Columbus, made
some use of it. YET when a man
drilling for salt near Burkesville in
southern Kentucky in 1929 struck oil
he was disappointed and alarmed
and did not realize that he had tap
ped what was to become a natural
resource enormously valuable.
T1 - ia - ~ &c
that the salt well driller had been
several times disappointed. Making
another attempt he remarked that
he would drill till he should strike
salt or strike hell"
When he struck oil and a gusher
poured its contents into Cumberland
River, caught fire and covered the
surface of the stream with fame
for fifty miles, he was sure that he
had made good his boast. Accord
ing to the legends of the Cumber-
land he started running from the
scene and perhaps still is going. as
the Flying Dutchman still is sailing
his ship.
Nowadays every drug store sells
clear tasteless mineral oil' as med
icine. When the Burkesville well
stopped burning, or when means
were found to stop it a company be
gan bottling the crude oil and sell
ing it as medicine, while Seneca OIL
was being sold from the salt wells OF
the Pittsburgh region and from a
spring in which oil flowed neal
Cuba, N. Y.
Beeswax, tallow, whale oil and
lard oil were the popular illumi,
nants in those days, and whales were
CYI -Atrn1oITT
was unfit to burn indoors because OF
the smoke and odor. The first pat
ent for refining it was not granted
till 1850. All the history of kerosene
has been written since then. Case
line is a later product, and more re
cent than the first manufacture Of
gasoline is the use of oil as a binder
for roads, a use somewhat similar 4
that made of it in Babylon.
OIL ana Coal Development
Oil wells have changed the aspect!
of life in the oil countries in Ken
lucky much less than coal mines
have changed life in the coal coun
tries. Coal development makes cite
a business upon a far larger scal'
than oil development. The forme'
villages of the valleys of the Biz
Sandy, the Cumberland and the Ken
lucky have been made so importan
by coal that various cities are in no
competition for the business that !
to be done in them. Cincinnati
Louisville, Knoxville, and Hunting
ton send travelling men into territor,
which hardly was on the trade ma
till coal made it rich. Oil is tapped
There is a boom. The oil towns ar
crowded beyond capacity for a time
But when the last wildcat terrltor,
has been developed and the oil !
flowing through the pipelines, evl
dence of the boom consists to a con
siderable degree in tales OF suddel
wealth which came to poor IAN.
holders who, in many instances. lei
the mountains to settle in the Blue
grass where roads are good ana au
tomobiIes may be used. IL is sai
commonly in the Bluegrass ina
mountain money has done more Una
|, anything else to advance n prlc
of farm land in the central countie
Many mountain farms, which re
, warded labor so slightly that no sen
timent for the home bound the W
, err to the soil when he sold out to a
oil company or took his one-eight
l royalty, are abandoned TO iui
growth. Their former owners ar
) living in the section of the stat
which James Lane Allen has cels