PETROLIA.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 61, 14 June 1873, Page 3

PETROLIA.

(CotKbtded from, our last J Corry City, Oil City, Cherry Creek, Titusville, and Sugar Creek are, besides Pithole City, among the chief cities of Petrolia, though there are many others with equally strange names.

Corn', though four years ago it was but a poor farm, which might liave been purchased at the rate of eight or ten dollars an acre, is now a permanent city; but its claims to superdistinction are disputed by both Oil City and Pithole. At the present time Corry contains about ten thousand inhabitants. It is the great depdt of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, and has nearly twenty banks, two newspapers, and an opera-house in course of construction! The quotations made at its oil-exchange have more effect upon Wall Street, New York, than those of the Exchange at San Francisco. It transacts business to the amount of £3,000,000 annually, and the site upon which the city stands, which five years ago could have been bought in toto for £5OOO, is now sold in lots at prices as high as lots of similar dimensions would fetch in Cheapside, London.

Corry and Oil City are situated nearly in the centre of the petroleum district, and are both about six hundred miles south-west from New York. As you approach these cities from a distance, they present to the eye something of the appearance that would be presented by one of the large manufacturing towns of England if it had suffered from fire, which had left its tall chimneys in a dilapidated condition ; and the illusion is rendered more perfect by the smoky appearance of the atmosphere, which is impregnated with oil-gas. The strange-look-ing derricks, however, which impart this aspect to the cities, are to be seen scattered all throughout the oil regions, often at a distance from the cities, where oil has been struck.

The cost of the machinery for boring and pumping is somewhat heavy if the endeavour to strike oil fails ; but it dwindles to a mere nothing in comparison with the profits that accrue to the successful oil-digger. One thousand pounds will cover the expense of sinking a well and purchasing the requisite machinery ; and, while all may be incurred for nought, the £lOOO may realize, and has in many instances realized, £5OOO within five weeks from oil being struck. It is gambling —risking £lOOO for the chance of half a million ! There are many blanks, but there are also many prizes. A company in Philadelphia sunk for oil at the cost of less than £2OOO. They struck a flowing well,* which they soldin a week to another company for £250,000. receiving besides, as a royalty, half the oil it yielded, which has since brought them in their thousand dollars (£200) a-day ! A poor farmer was one of a company who sunk a well which proved a failure. He sold his share for a horse and ten dollars, to enable him to leave the unlucky spot and return to his home, disheartened and ruined. Before he reached home oil began to flow, and he learned that his 100-dollar share, with which he had been in such haste to part, had again been sold for £50,003 dollars (10,080). Hundreds of similar instances have occurred. Poor farmers, who could hardly get a living from their land, have found oil beneath the surface of the soil, and have found themselves in a few weeks men of wealth. Others have sold their land for a mere trifle to speculators, "who have become millionnaires through the purchase. Again, other farmers, when the oil-fever arose, sold their farms as they stood to speculators for the fancy price of 1000 dollars an acre. The owner of the “ Tar and Blood ” farms, containing each some five hundred acres of poor land, refused to accept 1000 dollars an acre, and waited for a better offer! Prices did act ually rise higher,, and he eventually sold the “ Tar ” farm for 780,000 dollars, and the “ Blood ” farm for 2,000,000 dollars, or about half a million sterling for the two!

Close adjoining the “ Blood ” farm lived one widow McClintock, who owned a wretched farm, which, however, gave promises of oil. She sold it for an enormous sum, in “ greenbacks,” which were delivered to her in a bundle as big as a bolster. The old lady had a countrywoman’s distrust of banks, and therefore hoarded her motley, all in bills, in the shanty, in the very heart of the oil-diggings, where she still continued to reside. One night her petroleum lamp exploded, the shanty caught fire, and the widow and her “ greenbacks ” were alike consumed by the flames. Nothing, in fact, was saved of her large fortune but some 80,000 dollars (£18,000) which she had been persuaded to invest in State Securities.

Petrolia and its wealth have become a power in the State during the last three years, and every day adds to its influence Every day adds fresh instances to the long list of colossal fortunes realized, in many instances in a single week, often in a very few months, either by the possessors of a few acres of generality poor farm-land on which oil has been found or by the fortunate speculators who have “struck oil,” and parted with their interest in a flowing well, for which they paid 100 dollars, for 25,000 dollars. Every day also adds to the influence of Petrolia, as new and more valuable uses for the oil are discovered, and the demand for it becomes more and more universal, both in the United States and in Europe. For many years our supply of oil—every day becoming more necessary as civilization, progresses—has been gradually, yet surely decreasing. The whale and seal fisheries have become more and more precarious; the tallow trade with Russia has become more and more speculative; and the palm-oil trade with Africa, from which at one time much was anticipated, has dwindled to a mere nothing. Even our coal-fields are said to be “giving out;” and thus the gas, which has become necessary alike to our comfort and our progress, would fail us were there not a, supply to be obtained elsewhere. ' But the coal deposits and oil-wells

of Pennsylvania offer an abundant supply, and render needless our fears in thia respect. “ New diggings ” in California, or a “ new rush” in Australia, give no idea of the/iwwe produced in Pennsylvania by the striking of a fresh flowing oil-well, no matter how unfavorably situated with regard to means of transit, means of reaching the spot, or means of shelter and living when it is reached. Where oil is, there is wealth, and with wealth comes rapidly the means of indulgence in all the ■ rough backwoodsman’s notions of comfort and luxury, while he is still employed in making a fortune. Gold-digging is a slow and by no means sure way of making a fortune. At the oil-regions nothing is slow, and something, at least, is sure. There are, as we have said, more prizes than blanks; and when the prizes do come, they are so .out of all proportion to the venture, that it is no wonder people’s heads are turned, or that they are induced to risk their last dollar on a venture which may make them millionnaires or paupers within a week. The writer of this article passed through the oil region some three years ago, on his way from the Southern States to Canada, during the progress of the American War. He had, of course, an opportunity to witness something of the work that was going on, and of the activity that pervaded the locality; but the oil-diggings were then in their infancy, and he had, at that period, no inclination to remain and examine things narrowly, though even then the contrast that existed between the activity everywhere apparent, and the solitude of the district when lie had passed through it a few years before, struck him forcibly. He is, therefore, indebted to the special correspondent of the Times for most of the facts specified in this paper.