Start in th’ narrer road fer a beginning’,
An’ so strike oil in Heav’n fer a sure winnin’
When up the golden-stairs we goes a-shinnin’.
When the biggest well in Indiana flowed oil fifty feet above the derrick, at Van Buren, a local paper noted the effect thus: “The strike has given the town a tremendous boom. Several real-estate offices have opened and the town-council has raised the license for faro-banks from five dollars a year to twelve dollars.” At this rate Van Buren ought soon to be in the van.
JOHN VANAUSDALL. WM. PHILLIPS.
GEO. K. ANDERSON.
F. S. TARBELL. F. W. ANDREWS.
ORIGINAL D. W. KENNEY’S ALLEMAGOOZELUM-CITY WELL No 2.
CAPT. WM. HASSON. JOHN P. ZANE.
HENRY R. ROUSE.
VII.
THE VALLEY OF PETROLEUM.
Wonderful Scenes on Oil Creek—Mud and Grease Galore—Rise and Fall of Phenomenal Towns—Shaffer, Pioneer and Petroleum Centre—Fortune’s Queer Vagaries—Wells Flowing Thousands of Barrels—Sherman, Delamater and “Coal-Oil Johnnie”—From Penury to Riches and Back—Recitals That Discount Fairy-Tales.
“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ‘’Tis all barren.’”—Sterne.