AMERICA - Joel Cook

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life, and usually has but little odor, whilst its illuminating power is low, but in fuel value eight cubic feet equal one pound of coal. It was first used at Fredonia, New York, in 1821, for lighting purposes, being procured from a well. The natural-gas region is the part of Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies, extending into New York, Ohio and West Virginia; and gas is also found in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Kansas. It is held under enormous pressure within the pockets beneath the rocks, and when first reached in drilling, the tension has been known to equal a thousand pounds per square inch. It is not uncommon, when a well is drilled, to have all the tools and casing-pipe blown out, while an enormous thickness of masonry has to be constructed to hold down the cap that covers the well. Its use began in Pittsburg in 1886, the chief field of supply then being Murrysville, about twenty miles east of the city, while there are also other fields southwest and east of Pittsburg. The pipes underlie all the streets, and a main route of supply is along the bed of the Allegheny River. There are said to be about sixteen hundred miles of pipes laid down to lead the gas to Pittsburg from the different fields.

      PETROLEUM.

      The great petroleum fields lie in and near the Pittsburg region, in the basin of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extend from New York southwest to West Virginia, and also into Ohio. This region has had enormous yields in different parts of the river basin, the wells, however, ultimately dwindling as their supplies are drawn out. The petroleum industry, which has been one of the greatest in Pennsylvania, has been gradually all absorbed by the Standard Oil Company, which is probably the most extensive industrial combination in America, and certainly the most powerful. Yet we are told that those financial magnates began their wonderful career with an aggregate capital of only $24,000, largely borrowed money. There have been forty millions of barrels of petroleum taken from this great basin in a single year. The oil wells are bored in many places, south, southwest, north and northeast of Pittsburg. The "Panhandle Railroad," which crosses West Virginia to the Ohio, exhibits many of them. A branch of this railroad goes to Canonsburg, and thence to the town of Washington, on the old "National Road," thirty miles from Pittsburg. At Canonsburg was founded in 1773 Jefferson College, in a log cabin, which has now become the Jefferson Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church. Washington is a town of about four thousand people, rambling over a pleasant hilly region in Southwestern Pennsylvania, having as its chief institution Washington and Jefferson College, also a Presbyterian foundation, started in 1806 in what was then a remote Scotch-Irish colony beyond the mountains. Near this town in 1888 were struck the greatest petroleum wells the world ever knew. One of them, the Jumbo well, in sixty days after the first strike had poured out one hundred and forty thousand barrels of oil, flowing a steady circular stream of almost white oil, about five inches in diameter, at the rate of forty-two hundred gallons an hour. Another well, afterwards bored not far away, in its freshness of infancy poured out sixty-three hundred gallons an hour. Additional wells were bored with almost the same results; but they all afterwards dwindled, and finally ceasing a free flow, had to be pumped. This is the universal experience of all the oil regions, the "gushers," soon after the great strikes, giving out, as the store of petroleum in the reservoirs beneath becomes exhausted. But all this shows how enormous is the natural wealth of the Pittsburg district—oil, coal, coke and gas, with iron, steel and glass, electricity and railways, contributing to the wonderful prosperity.

      The greatest petroleum field, however, was up the Allegheny River, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, and the first wells bored to obtain it were sunk at Titusville, on Oil Creek, in 1859. The early settlers knew of the appearance of oil about the headwaters of the Allegheny in New York and Pennsylvania, and the name of Oil Creek was given a stream for this reason in Allegheny County, New York, and also to the one in Venango County, Pennsylvania. The Indians had long collected the oil on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York, a course that the white settlers followed, and it was for years sold as a medicine by the name of Seneca or Genesee oil. When its commercial value for illuminating purposes began to be recognized, Colonel E. L. Drake went to Titusville to see if it could be obtained in sufficient quantities. He bored the first well about a mile south of Titusville, and on August 26, 1859, the oil was struck at a depth of seventy-one feet. The drill suddenly sunk into the cavity of the rock beneath, and the oil rose within a few inches of the surface. A small pump was introduced which brought out four hundred gallons daily, and then a large pump, increasing the daily flow to a thousand gallons. Soon a steam-engine was applied, and the flow continued uninterrupted for weeks. Titusville had at the time three hundred people. Many wells were sunk in the neighborhood with varying success, and the product of the Oil Creek district became so large that the market could not absorb it, and at the beginning of 1861, with two thousand wells in operation, the price declined to twenty-five cents per barrel. The two great wells were the Empire, originally yielding twenty-five hundred barrels daily, and the Phillips, nearly four thousand barrels. In 1863 the production had slackened, but the uses had expanded, and prices rose proportionately. Vast fortunes were then rapidly made, and as soon squandered. In the first twelve years of the development of this district, which extended over about four hundred square miles, there were taken from some four thousand wells forty-two millions of barrels of oil, which were marketed for $163,000,000. At first it was carried away by the railroads, of which several sent branches into the district, but there have since been laid extensive lines of pipes which convey it in various directions, and largely to New York and Philadelphia for foreign export. When this district was at the height of its yield it produced four hundred millions of gallons a year.

      ASCENDING THE ALLEGHENY.

      From Pittsburg, through bold and pleasing scenery, we ascend the Allegheny River, the broad channel flowing grandly around stately bends enclosed between high hills. Thirty miles above Pittsburg the Kiskiminetas comes in, and in a region of coal mines and furnaces is found the town of Kittanning, which retains the name of the Indian village standing there in Colonial days. This original Indian village was attacked by Colonel Armstrong and three hundred troops at dawn on August 8, 1757, and the Indians, who sided with the French, refusing to surrender, they were pretty much all killed and their village burnt. Armstrong's name is preserved in the county. Beyond is Brady's Bend, a great curve of the river, and here are seen the derricks of many deserted oil wells, as the farther journey above for miles also discloses. This was the Modoc oil district. The Morrison well was struck in 1872, yielding five hundred barrels daily, and immediately a town was laid out, not inappropriately called Greece City, and it soon had a large population. This was a prolific oil region at one time, and back from the river were the well-known oleaginous towns of Modoc City, Karns City and Petrolia. The Allegheny River gradually leads us up to Venango County, which was the chief oil region. Franklin, the capital of the county, has about five thousand inhabitants, and is built at the mouth of French Creek, the site of the old French Fort Venango, which Indian word meant "a guiding mark on a tree." It stood on a commanding ridge, and was one of the chain of posts the French built from the lakes across to the Ohio, to hold their possessions, dating from 1753. The French had a large garrison there, but after Canada was captured the English got possession, and in 1763 it was the scene of a terrible massacre, the Indians taking it, murdering the entire garrison, and slowly roasting the commandant to death.

      Five miles above, Oil Creek flows into the Allegheny, and here is Oil City, the petroleum headquarters. It has had a varying history, being once almost destroyed by flood and twice by fire, but maintains its supremacy and is a complete oil town—the air filled with petroleum odors, and the lower streets saturated with the fluid. On the Allegheny, nine miles from Oil City, is Oleopolis, and a short distance inland is Pithole City, which was one of the famous oil towns whose rise and decline were so phenomenal. A few farmers here tried to get a scanty subsistence from the rocky and almost barren soil, where, on a hill, there was a fissure two to four feet wide, called the "pithole," from which came out at intervals hot air and bad smells. This was on the Holmden farm, which had been nominally valued at five dollars an acre. Somebody thought he detected the smell of oil among the odors coming up, and a well was bored. It struck oil in the winter of 1864–65, and was the greatest strike made down to that time—the United States Well yielding seven thousand barrels daily. Multitudes flocked thither, and in six months Pithole City arose in the wilderness with fifteen thousand inhabitants, two theatres, an opera house, a daily newspaper, and seventy-two hotels of various degrees. Numerous

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