THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 200, 10 January 1866, Page 3

THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA.

A special correspondent of the Ti?nes, in a letter written from Oil City, in Pennsylvania, gives an interesting accouut of the astonishingly rapid progress of that country since the discovery of the petroleum wells : — Petrolia and its wealth have become a power in the State during the last tlu-ee years,' and every day increases its -wide spread influence — every day adds fresh instances to the long list of colossal fortunes realised in a week, either by the possessors of a few acres of poor farm land on which oil has been found, or by the fortunate speculator who has " struck ile " and parted with his 50th interest in a flowing well, for which he paid lOOdols. At a premium of 25,000 Every day, too, adds to the influence of Pertrolia as new and more valuable uses for the oil are hourly discovered, and the demand for it becomes more certain and more universal both in the States and Europe. It is, in fact, almost impossible lo describe, and it would certainly be very diflicult to exaggerate, the extraodinary'rise in the material prosperity of all around this region. I think lam speaking within the mark when I say that within a circuit of thirty miles round tfiis Oil City there are more so-called cities and towns now existing than there were villages, or even farms, four years ago. Take one instance : Corry, four years ago, was a poor farm where the thinly scratched soil of cold clay land yielded so little that the whole plaoe, buildings and all, might easily have been purchased at Bdols or lOdols an acre. It was a mere halting place for sportsmen en route to shoot deer in the now manufacturing regions of Petrolia. I was at Corry the other night. It is a fine rough city of about 10,000 inhabitants. The Atlantic and Great "Western Railway, which has opened it up, has its great depot there, and has made it the central exchange of petroleum. It has nearly twenty banks, two newspapers, and the city* is now building a large opera-house. The quotations made in the oil-exchange at Corry, whether of oil, gold or breadstuffs, influence "Wall-street, and have infinitely greater weight on the trade of the country than anything done at Philadelphia, or indeed throughout all Pennsylvania. Yet all this has been done within four years, and the site of a city which now transacts business to the amount of £3,000,000 sterling annually, and where the land sells almost as dear as in Cheapside, could have been bought four years ago for less than £5000. But Corry is only one sample out of many. Its position as the arbiter and ruler of prices between the oil regions and New York and Europe gives it, of course, great importance, though in reality the city is not larger than many others of Petrolia, which are much younger, Kouseville, Plummer, Titusvile, Franklin, are all the juniors of Corry by a couple of years, yet some of these are almost as important as Corry itself and nearly as large. The city from which I write can scarcely be counted as more than three years old, yet even after what I have seen of the sudden rise and sudden wealth of the oildom, its extent, its squalid wealth and dirty evidences of incessant activity, its population, and its resources, all make it a phenomenon even in this land of wonders. Oil City claims to dispute pre-eminence even with Corry, though I am told by Englishmen that its rise, its wealth, and bizsiness energy are, as it were, things of every-day occurrence compared with the new light which has risen farther up the hills, the now universal beacon of attraction in the rush for speculation — Pithole City. It ia only four months old. It is only four months Bince the first trees of the forest amid which it stands were felled ; yet a city, both in size and population, it is admitted to be — a city which is now in influence and excitement second to none in all Petrolia. It matters not to state experiences of Cherry Eun, Titusville, Cherry-tree Eun, Oil Creek, Sugar Creek, Eouseville, or all the now for a time disregarded regions. Mo3t of the wells in these last-named localities are pumping. At Pithole they are all flowing, and flowing at a rate which, even for Petrolia, is marvellous, and is making the people round about for miles wild in their desire and efforts to reach this new land cf promise and performance "New diggings" at California — a "new rush" in Australia, give no idea of the furor produced here by striking flowing wells in any territory, no matter hovr unfavorably situate with regard to means of transit, means of getting there, means of living, or means of shelter when there. Where oil is there i 3 wealth, and with "wealth comes rapidly the opportunity of indulging in all the rough backwoodsman's notions of luxury, such as dry clean beds and food and drinkwhen he wants it, while he is making aforfcune. Gold digging is a slow and not too sure a way to fortune. Here at the oil regions nothing is slow, and something i 3 sure. It is a mere gamble — 5000dols for a chance of a million. There are many blanks, but there are also many prizes ; and when the prizes come they are so out of all proportion to the venture that it ceases to be a wonder , that people's heads are turned, and they risk their "bottom dollar" in what may make them millionaires or pauper 3in a week. All that is written of the wildest manias of South Sea schemes, all that novelists have depicted of John La-y's rule in [France, falls utterly short of the fever of speculation in Petrolia. Reasoning is useless here. The attractions must indeed be strong to induce people to take up their abode in these places, for more detestable residences could hardly be imagined. The following is the description given by the Times' correspondent of Oil City, literally 60 to be called : — The Oil Creek Railway branch stops some half mile or so sliort of this city proper. The distance may seem trifling, but half a mile seems a good, deal in this wild region, where the trains are not allowed to come further on in case of their fires or sparks exploding the petroleum gas which forms the atmosphere, or where, in fact, if all partieß were ever so much inclined that the track should advance, there is not yet room for it. All along the last few miles to Oil City the derricks have been becoming thicker and thicker ; the incessant walking beam which pumps the oil more and more active, the roads worse, and the painful scenes of overladen teams struggling through. mud up to their shoulders more and more frequent. The smell of the gas, though at first not very unpleasant, soon gets painfully strong, and at last most decidedly nauseating. It is said here far and -wide that the smell is good for weak lungs, ■winch it certainly may be, though its effect on Btrong lungs for the first day or two is absolutely suffocating, and few can bear to remain long amid the white steam-like miasma of a flowing well. The train, as I have said, stops at little more than half a mils fi'om Oil City proper. The station is a mere rough shanty, yet rough as it is, it may be called almost a gilded saloon in comparison with its crowd of roughest and most muddy occupants. Mud in Petrolia is sufficiently fluid to find its own level like "water, and to that level to bring all in Oil City, man or beast. Mud and oil, one or the other, or both combined, reign supreme here. As you enter towards this city the mouth of the valley opens out a little as French Creek or Venango River turns wider into the delta which forms Oil Creek. In the cuttings of the railway through the rock can be seen the petrified remains of what were once dense forests, of trees "with their stone stems projecting through the soft layers of shale. These trees of a bygone age lie as thick as they could "well have fallen. The roughness of their bark, their annular and radiating lines are still to be seen and traced through the soil for forty feet and more below what is now the surface of the earth. Kb one, however, minds these things, or the most extraordinary mineralogical or geological facts which are every day brought to light by the shafts of oil. Nothing is wanted here but oil, and with the presence of that oil questions are answered. This city, as a place of four years' growth or less, is one of the most extraordinary works of Petrolia. In no other place in the world have I seen such evidences of apathy and energy, of sloth and industry, of "wealth and squalor. Only the squalor, however, or what in England would be called euch is a superficial aspect which all wear. The -whole population is ragged, muddy, and dirty ; but the •while population is without an exception move or less rich. No one lives in this sea of oily mud tmt those who are making money fasfc, and all

. "wlio live here know that the oldest tatters are good enough for the filth amid which they dwell. Thus the two things come to be inseparable in the > public mmd — that all who live in oildom are ' ragged and dirty, and all who live there rich. r About the immutable truth of the first part of the propositton none who have ever been here can entertain the slightest doubt, and the latter is not ' altogether devoid of a general accuracy. You land from the cars in a perfect Eea of inud — mud of such depth, tenacity, and slipperiness, as I believe is not to be found in any 1 part of the world. That at Balaclava was really nothing to it. It is always one or two, and often three feet deep, on what are called the roads. Occasionally the greasy monotony of slime is relieved by a string of rough boulders tossed into the mud as stepping stones for those who want to cross, and by and by these become mingled wijh egg boxes, broken bottles and jars refuse meat, and vegetables, sardine tins, ashes old bones, and garbage, thrown from the saloons ; broken barrels, stumps of trees, waggons that have "gin out," pieces of machinery that have* foundered on the way—the first tokens of Oil City proper. These indications of the town are as varied as they arc intermittent, for the real Oil City is only one long winding street on a mud flat between the river and the high steep bluffs ; and along this narrow strip depots, wharves, stores, hotels, eating saloons, whisky shops, and wells, each in their turn, struggle for pre-eminence, without the smallest regard to the position or wants of others. Here is a whisky saloon, with men smoking, and drinking, and next to it a pumping well, which fills the air with its infiainrnable gas, and on all the greasy boards round which "No smoking" is roughly chalked. Then comes a short interval of side walk, where the lumber path, if not above the mud, is at least, somewhat above the water and oil ; then, again, pumping wells with their tanks filled with petroleum, and beyond these men hewing and blasting away the cuffs to make room for houses over the dirfcy waste, or others running up on piles above the creek, fastening walls and roofs and ceilings together with iron tie-rods, to enable the frail tenements to withstand the dreadful and unequal strain of dangerous floods that arise co frequently. Then conies, between a group of oil wells and little creeks and pools of stagnant oil, a photographic shanty ; then barges moored in mud alongside the highway, and called "eatings s aloons," where! the dirty bedcots are slung over dirtier tables, where the charge is 3 dols a day, and where not even the all-potent oil is taken in exchange for money, or rather greenbacks—for money, in the English acceptation of the term, seems to have vanished since the War. Higher up than this, the different kinds of stores may be known at once by the samples of ragged clothing thrown into the side walk or the mud of the road outside them. No one here buys clothes while any he has got will hold together, and when he buys he simply attires himself in the stores — a coat at one place, boots at another, and so on, throwing out into the road the garments which he supersedes by better. The way of life has fallen into its roughest forms here, yet only as regards its outwards seeming, for in all that relates to good order and the security of life and property one is as safe here as in Cheapside. The upper end of the long straggling "street -which constitutes the "city," and which ends at Oil Creek, is in its way almost indescribable. If, however, your readers can imagine how the dirtiest parts of Limehouse would look if mixed up with log shanties and the tall wooden buildings of improvised American cities, all before and behind the houses being interspersed with machinery and pumping oil wells, the whole partly burnt, and all more or less damaged by floods, they will have some idea of the " surroundings "of Oil City. Add to this a teemiug population on the side walks, wearing the best and stoutest of jack boots but with nothing else of clothing than would be sufficiently decent for a scarecrow in England; fill up the roads wifli overladened horses striving to pull their waggons of oil through the sea mud ; cover the adjacent river with crowds of flat barges, all laden with oil ; and, above all, make oil predominant in what you eat drink, feel or smell, and the every day life of OH City is before you. Once in the place, oil becomes as inseparable from everything you touch from clothes, meals, conversation, as the very atmosphere itself, -which is, in fact, entirely made up of gas from the oil. Men think of nothing, certainly talk of nothing, and probably dream of nothing but oil ; and 2" there is anything more nauseating than the gas from a flowing well it is the eternal clamour of " ile, ile, ile," as it is called hero, of " surface indications," " good shows," "dry territories," "hundred- barrel wells," " thousand-barrel wells," " No. 970, a big thing," " No. 800, quite a strike," " 830 gin out," and so on, from early dawn till the last of those in these rough hotels are asleep.