and "Sally an' the babies' when she returned to her quiet home after such a trip! Bless her old heart! Although the broad hills and sweeping streams which grouped many sweet panoramas might be dull and meaningless to the average Kentuckian of former days, through some brains glowing visions flitted. Two miles south of Columbia, Adair county, on the road to Burksville, a heap of stones and pieces of rotting timber may still be seen. Fiftyfive years ago the man who owned the farm constructed a huge wheel, loaded with rocks of different weights on its strong arms. Neighbors jeered and ridiculed, just as scoffers laughed at Noah's ark and thought it wouldn't be much of a shower anyway. The hour to start the wheel arrived and its builder stood by. A rock on an arm of the structure slipped off and struck him a fatal blow, felling him lifeless to the earth! He was a victim of the craze to solve the problem of Perpetual Motion. Who can tell what dreams and plans and fancies and struggles beset this obscure genius, cut off at the moment he anticipated a triumph? The wheel was permitted to crumble and decay, no human hand touching it more. The heap of stones is a pathetic memento of a sad tragedy. Not far from the spot Mark Twain was born and John Fitch whittled out the rough model of the first steamboat. 64 EF YO KNOW'D COUSIN JIM." Riding in Scott county, Tennessee, at full gallop on a rainy afternoon, a cadaverous man emerged from a miserable hut and hailed me. was not prolonged unduly. The dialogue 'Gen'ral," he queried, "air yo th' oilman frum Pennsylvany?" "Yes, what can I do for you?" "I jes' wanted ter ax ef yo know'd my cousin Jim!" "Who is your cousin Jim?" "Law, Jim Sickles!" I tho't ez how evr'ybody know'd Jim! He went up No'th arter th' wah an' ain't cum back yit. Ef yo see 'im tell 'im yo seed me!" A promise to look out for "Jim" satisfied the verdant backwoodsman, who probably had never been ten miles from his shanty and deemed "up No'th" a place about the size of a Tennessee hunting-ground! Fair women, pure Bourbon and men extra plucky, No wonder blue grass folks esteem themselves lucky- Let Fortune assume forms and fancies Protean, V. A HOLE IN THE GROUND. THE FIRST WELL DRILLED FOR PETROLEUM-THE MEN WHO STARTED OIL ON ITS TRIUMPHANT MARCH-COLONEL DRAKE'S OPERATIONS-SETTING HISTORY RIGHT - How TITUSVILLE WAS BOOMED AND A GIANT INDUSTRY ORIGINATED-MODEST BEGINNING OF THE GRANDEST ENTERPRISE ON EARTH-SIDE DROPPINGS THAT THROW LIGHT ON AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT. "I have tapped the mine."-Colonel E. L. Drake. "Come quick, there's oceans of oil."-" Uncle Billy" Smith. ATURE certainly spared no effort to bring petroleum into general notice ages before James Young manufactured paraffine-oil in Scotland or Samuel M. Kier fired-up his miniature refinery at Pittsburg. North and south, east and west the presence of the greasy staple was manifested positively and extensively. The hump of a dromedary, the kick of a mule or the ruby blossom on a toper's nose could not be more apparent. It bubbled in fountains, floated on rivulets, escaped from crevices, collected in pools, blazed on the plains, gurgled down the mountains, clogged the ozone with vapor, smelled and sputtered, trickled and seeped for thousands of years in vain attempts to divert attention towards the source of this prodigal display. Mankind accepted it as a liniment and lubricant, gulped it down, rubbed it in, smeared it on and never thought of seeking whence it came or how much of it might be procured. Even after salt-wells had produced the stuff none stopped to reflect that the golden grease must be imprisoned far beneath the earth's surface, only awaiting release to bless the dullards callous to the strongest hints respecting its headquarters. The dunce who heard Sydney Smith's side-splitting story and sat as solemn as the sphinx, because he couldn't see any point until the next day and then got it heels over head, was less obtuse. Puck was right in his little pleasantry: "What fools these mortals be!" Dr. Abraham Gesner obtained oil from coal in 1846 and in 1854 patented an illuminator styled "Kerosene," which the North American Kerosene Gaslight Company of New York manufactured at its works on Long Island. The excel 55 lence of the new light-the smoke and odor were eliminated gradually-caused a brisk demand that froze the marrow of the animal-oil industry. Capitalists invested largely in Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri coal-lands, saving the expense of transporting the "raw material" by erecting oil-works at the mines. Exactly in the ratio that mining coal was cheaper than catching whales mineraloil had the advantage in competing for a market. Realizing this, men owning fish-oil works preserved them from extinction by manufacturing the mineralproduct Young and Gesner had introduced. Thus Samuel Downer's half-million-dollar works near Boston and colossal plant at Portland were utilized. Downer had expanded ideas and remarked with characteristic emphasis, in reply to a friend who criticised him for the risk he ran in putting up an enormous refinery at Corry, as the oil-production might exhaust: "The Almighty never does a picayune business!" Fifty or sixty of these works were turning out oil from bituminous shales in 1859, when the influx of petroleum compelled their conversion into refineries to avert overwhelming loss. Maine had one, Massachusetts five, New York five, Pennsylvania eight, Ohio twenty-five, Kentucky six, Virginia eight, Missouri one and one was starting in McKean county, near Kinzua village. The Carbon Oil Company, 184 Water street, New York City, was the chief dealer in the illuminant. The entire petroleum traffic in 1858 was barely eleven-hundred barrels, most of it obtained from Tarentum. A shipment of twelve barrels to New York in November, 1857, may be considered the beginning of the history of petroleum as an illuminator. How the baby has grown! The price of "kerosene" or "carbon oil," always high, advanced to two dollars a gallon! Nowadays people grudge ten cents a gallon for oil vastly clearer, purer, better and safer! One good result of the high prices was an exhaustive scrutiny by the foremost scientific authorities into all the varieties of coal and bitumen, out of which comparisons with petroleum developed incidentally. Belief in its identity with coal-oil prompted the investigations which finally determined the economic value of petroleum. Professor B. Silliman, Jun., Professor of Chemistry in Yale College, in the spring of 1855 concluded a thorough analysis of petroleum from a "spring" on Oil Creek, nearly two miles south of Titusville, where traces of pits cribbed with rough timber still remained and the sticky fluid had been skimmed for two generations. In the course of his report Professor Silliman observed: "It is understood and represented that this product exists in great abundance on the property; that it can be gathered wherever a well is sunk, over a great number of acres, and that it is unfailing in its yield from year to year. The question naturally arises, Of what value is it in the arts and for what uses can it be employed? *** The Crude Oil was tried as a means of illumination. For this purpose a weighed quantity was decomposed by passing it through a wrought-iron retort filled with carbon and ignited to redness. It produced nearly pure carburetted hydrogen gas, the most highly illuminating of all carbon gases. In fact, the oil may be regarded as chemically identical with illuminating gas in a liquid form. It burned with an intense flame. *** The light from the rectified Naphtha is pure and white, without odor, and the rate of consumption less than half that of Camphene or Rosin-Oil. *** Compared with Gas, the Rock-Oil gave more light than any burner, except the costly Argand, consuming two feet of gas per hour. These photometric experiments have given the Oil a much higher value as an illuminator than I had dared to hope. *** As this oil does not gum or become acid or rancid by exposure, it possesses in that, as well as in its wonderful resistance to extreme cold, important qualities for a lubricator. *** It is worthy of note that my experiments prove that nearly the whole of the raw product may be manufactured without waste, solely by one of the most simple of all chemical processes." Notwithstanding these researches, which he spent five months in prosecuting, the idea of artesian boring for petroleum-naturally suggested by the oil in the salines of the Muskingum, Kanawha, Cumberland and Allegheny-never oc |