reservoirs will be found in the huge cavities formed by volcanic convulsions of the Andes. From the Chira to the Fumbes river, a desert waste one-hundred-and-eighty miles in length and fifteen miles in width, lying along the coast between the Pacific ocean and the Andes, the oil-field of Peru is believed to extend. For two centuries oil has been gathered in shallow pits and stored in vats, precisely as in Pennsylvania. The burning sun evaporated the lighter parts, leaving a glutinous substance, which was purified and thickened to the consistency of sealing-wax by boiling. It was shipped to southern ports in boxes and used as glazing for the inside of Aguardiente jars. The Spanish government monopolized the trade until 1830, when M. Lama purchased the land. In 1869 Blanchard C. Dean and Rollin Thorne, Americans, "denounced " the mine, won a lawsuit brought by Lama and drilled four wells two-hundred-and-thirty feet deep, a short distance from the beach. Each well yielded six to ten barrels a day, which deeper drilling in 1871–2 augmented largely. Frederic Prentice, the enterprising Pennsylvania operator, secured an enormous grant in 1870, bored several wells— one a thousand-barreler-erected a refinery, supplied the city of Lima with kerosene and exported considerable quantities to England and Australia. The war with Chili compelled a cessation of operations for some years. Dr. Tweddle, who had established a refinery at Franklin, tried to revive the Peruvian fields in 1887-8. He drilled a number of wells, refined the output, enlisted New York capital and shipped cargoes of the product to San Francisco. The district has been rather quiet of late, but qualified judges have no doubt that "in the sweetbye-and-bye" the oleaginous goose may hang altitudinum in Peru. THE BABY HAS GROWN. The petroleum industry is the one circus bigger inside the canvas than on the posters. A larger percentage of the oil product of the United States is sent abroad than of any other except cotton, while nearly every home in the land is blessed with petroleum's beneficent light. If needs be petroleum may well be defiant ; The baby has grown to be earth's greatest giant. Beginning with 1866, the exports of illuminating oils were doubled in 1868, again in 1871, again in 1877 and again in 1891. The average exports per week in 1894 were as much as for the entire year of 1864. The world has reason to be thankful for Pennsylvania petroleum, which has a wider sale than any other American product. Breadstuffs and cotton, iron and coal All have been distanc'd; oil has the pole. From 23,000,000 gallons in 1864 the exports of Pennsylvania petroleum have multiplied thirty times. The total exports for the first three months of 1896 foot up 195,637,153 gallons, valued at $12,389,384. For the nine months ending March 31, 1896, they amounted to 650,676,974 gallons, valued at $45,563,750. For the same period of 1895 the exports were 671,196, 133 gallons and their value, $31,554,308. Not less impressive is the marvelous reduction in the price of refined, so that the oil has found a welcome everywhere. Export oil averaged in 1861, 61%1⁄2 cents per gallon; in 1871, 23% cents per gallon; in 1881, 8 cents per gallon; in 1891, 6% cents per gallon; in 1892, 6 cents per gallon ; in 1894, 5 1-6 cents per gallon, or one-twelfth that in 1861. But this decrease, great as it is, does not represent the real reduction in the price of oil, as the cost of the barrel is included in these prices. A gallon of bulk-oil cost in 1861 not less than 58 cents; in 1894, not more than 321⁄2 cents, or hardly one-seventeenth. In January, 1861, the price was 75 cents; in January, 1894, one-twentyfifth that of thirty-three years before. The consumers have received the benefit of constant improvements and reductions in prices, while twelve-hundred-million dollars have come from abroad to this country for petroleum. It takes oil to make a showing And make others quit their blowing. The capital invested in the petroleum-business has increased from onethousand dollars, raised in 1859 to drill the first well in Pennsylvania, to fivehundred-millions. It is just as easy to say five-hundred-million dollars as fivehundred-million grains of sand, but the possibilities of such a sum of money afford material for endless flights of the imagination. Thirty-thousand miles of pipe-lines handle the output most expeditiously, conveying it to the seaboard at less than teamsters used to receive for hauling it a half-mile. Ten-thousand tank-cars have been engaged in transportation. Seventy-five bulk-steamers and fleets of sailing-vessels carry refined from Philadelphia and New York to the remotest ports in Europe, Africa and Asia. Astral Oil and Standard White have penetrated “wherever a wheel can roll or a camel's foot be planted." In Pennsylvania thirty-five-million barrels have been produced and four-thousand wells drilled in a single year. Add to this the results of operations in Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and California, and the whole race must acknowledge that "Petroleum is King." III. NEARING THE DAWN. SALT-WATER HELPING SOLVE THE PROBLEM-KIER'S IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTS -REMARKABLE SHAFT AT TARENTUM-WEST VIRGINIA AND OHIO TO THE FRONT-THE LANTERN FIEND-WHAT AN OLD MAP SHOWED-KENTUCKY PLAYS TRUMPS-THE FATHER OF FLOWING WELLS-SUNDRY EXPERIENCES AND OBSERVATIONS AT VARIOUS POINTS. "A salt-well dug in 1814, to the depth of four hundred feet, near Marietta, discharged oil periodically at intervals of two to four days."-Dr. Hildredth, A. D. 1819. "Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or less petroleum."-Dr. J. P. Hale, A. D. 1825. "There are numerous springs of this mineral oil in various regions of the West and South."Prof. B. Silliman, A. D. 1833. W HILE cannel coal in the western end of Pennsylvania and other sections of the country, bitumen and shales from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Huron, chapapote or mineral pitch in Cuba and San Domingo, oozings in Peru and Ecuador, asphaltum in Canada and oil-springs in Columbia and a halfdozen states of the Union from California to New York denoted the presence of petroleum over the greater part of this hemisphere, wells bored for salt were leading factors in bringing about its full development. Scores of these wells pumped more or less oil long before it "entered into the mind of man" to utilize the unwelcome intruder. Indeed, so often were brine and petroleum found in the same geological formation that scientists ascribed to them a kindred origin. The first borings to establish this peculiarity were on the Kanawha River, in West Virginia, a state destined to play an important part in oleaginous affairs. Dr. J. P. Hale, a reputable authority, claims oil appeared in the deep salt-wells of Ruffner Brothers, who began operations in 1806, causing much annoyance. His account continues: "Neary all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or less petroleum, and some of the deeper wells a considerable flow. Many persons now think, trusting to their recollections, that some of the wells afforded as much as twenty-five to fifty barrels per day. This was allowed to flow over from the top of the salt cisterns to the river, where, from its specific gravity, it spread over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent hues and not very savory odor could be traced for many miles down the stream. It was from this that the river received the nickname of 'Old Greasy,' by which it was long known by Kanawha boatmen and others." At the mouth of Hawkinberry Run, three miles north of Fairmount, in Marion county, a well for salt was put down in 1829 to the depth of six hundred feet. "A stinking substance gave great trouble," an owner reported, “forming three or four inches on the salt-water tank, which was four feet wide and sixteen feet long." They discovered the stuff would burn, dipped it off with buckets and consumed it for fuel under the salt-pan. J. J. Burns in 1865 leased the farm, drilled the abandoned well deeper, stuck the tools in the hole and had to quit after penetrating sixty feet of "a fine grit oil rock." Mr. Burns wrote in 1871 regarding operations in Marion: 46 The second well put down in this county was about the year 1835, on the West Fork River, just below what is now known as the Gaston mines. The well was sunk by a Mr. Hill, of Armstrong county, Pa., who found salt water of the purest quality and in a great quantity, same as in the first well. He died just after the well was finished, so nothing was done with it. About the time this well wis completed one was drilled in the Morgan settlement, just below Rivesville. Salt water was ound with great quantities of gas. Twenty-five years since the farmers on Little Bingamon Creek formed a company and drilled a well-I think to a depth of eight-hundred feetin which they claimed to have found oil in paying quantities. You can go to it to-day and get oil out of it. The president told me he saw oil spout out of the tubing forty or fifty feet, just as they started the pump to test it. The company got to quarreling among themselves, some of the stockholders died and part of the stock got into the hands of minor heirs, so nothing was done with the enterprise." Similar results attended other salt-wells in West Virginia. The first oilspeculators were Bosworth, Wells & Co., of Marietta, Ohio, who as early as 1843 bought shipments of two to five barrels of crude from Virginians who secured it on the Hughes River, a tributary of the Little Kanawha. This was sold for medical purposes in Pittsburg, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. Two of the Pittsburg firms handling it were Schoomaker & Co. and B. A. Fahnestock. Notable instances of this kind occurred on the Allegheny River, opposite Tarentum, twenty miles above Pittsburg, as early as 1809. Wells sunk for brine to supply the salt-works were troubled with what the owners called "edd, mysterious grease." Samuel M. Kier, a Pittsburg druggist, whose father worked some of these wells, conceived the idea of saving the "grease," which for years had run waste, and in 1846 he bottled it as a medicine. He knew it had commercial and medicinal value and spared no exertions to introduce it widely. He believed implicitly in the greenish fluid taken from his salt wells, at first as a healing agent and farther on as an illuminant. A bottle of the oil, corked and labeled by Kier's own hands, lies on my desk at this moment, in a wrapper dingy with age and redolent of crude. A four-page circular inside recites the good qualities of the specific in gorgeous language P. T. Barnum himself would not have scorned to father. For example: "Kier's Petroleum, or Rock Oil, Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy! Procured from a Well in Allegany Co., Pa., Four Hundred Feet below the Earth's Surface. Put up and Sold by Samuel M. Kier, 363 Liberty Street, Pittsburgh, Pa. "The healthful balm, from Nature's secret spring, "The Petroleum has been fully tested! It was placed before the public as A REMEDY OF WONDERFUL EFFICACY. Every one not acquainted with its virtues doubted its healing qualities. The cry of humbug was raised against it. It had some friends-those who were cured through its wonderful agency. Those spoke in its favor. The lame through its instrumentality were made to walk-the blind to see. Those who had suffered for years under the torturing pains of RHEUMATISM, GOUT AND NEURALGIA were restored to health and usefulness. Several who were blind |