But in the ozokerite region of Poland, where everything is done on a small scale, when compared with like enterprises in this country, the leases were on tracts thirty-two feet square. These were so small that the surface was not large enough to contain the earth that had to be raised to sink the shaft; consequently the earth had to be transported to a distance, and, when I saw it, there was a mound sixty or seventy feet high. Its weight had become so great that it caused a sinking of the earth, and endangered the shafts to such an extent that the government ordered its removal to a distance and its deposit on ground that was not undermined. The shafts are four feet square, and the sides are supported by timbers six inches through, which leaves a shaft three feet square. The miner digs the well or shaft just as we dig our water wells, and the dirt and rock are hoisted up in a bucket by a rope and windlass. But one man can work in the shaft at a time. For many years no water was found; but, as there is a deposit of petroleum under the ozokerite, at a depth of six hundred feet from the surface, the miners were troubled with gas. This is got rid of by blowing a current of fresh air from a rotary fan through a pipe extending down the shaft as fast as the curbing of timber is put in place. The ozokerite is embedded in a very stiff blue clay for a depth of several hundred feet; below, it is interlaid with rock. [Specimens of crude and manufactured ozokerite were on exhibition, through the kindness of Dr. J. S. Newberry.]
That part of the earth's surface has more miners' shafts to the acre than any other part of the globe. As wages are very low in Poland, averaging not more than forty cents a day for men and ten cents for children, a very small quantity of ozokerite pays for the working. If thirty or forty pounds a day is obtained, it remunerates the two men and one or two children required to work each lease. When the bucket, containing the earth, rock, and wax, is dumped in the little shed covering the shaft, it is picked over by the children, who detach the wax from the clay or rock with knives. The miners use galvanized wire ropes and wooden buckets. When preparing to descend, they invariably cross themselves and utter a short prayer. The business is not free from danger, carelessness on the part of the boy supplying the fresh air, or the caving in of the unsupported roof, causing a large number of deaths. One of the government inspectors of the mines informed me that in one week there had been eight deaths from accidents.
The ozokerite is taken to a crude furnace, and put into a common cast iron kettle, and melted. This allows the dirt to sink to the bottom, and the ozokerite, freed from all other solids, is skimmed off with a ladle, poured into conical moulds, and allowed to cool, in which form it is sold to the refiners, for about six cents per pound. The quantity produced is uncertain, as the miners take care to understate it, for the reason that the government lays a tax upon all incomes, and the landowner demands his one-fourth of the quantity mined. The best authority is Leo Strippelman, who states the quantity produced in fifteen years at from 375,000,000 to 400,000,000 pounds, worth twenty-four millions of dollars. As the owners of the land get one-fourth of the sum, they received six millions. This is at the rate of four hundred thousand a year, a rather valuable crop from some two hundred acres of land.
The miners do not support the earth by timber or pillars, as they should; the result is that the whole plot of about two hundred acres is gradually sinking, and this will eventually ruin the industry in that part of the deposit. In another part of the same field, a French company has purchased forty acres, and it is mining the whole tract and hoisting through one shaft by steam power. In that shaft they have sunk to a depth of six hundred feet, and are troubled with water and petroleum. These they pump out very much the same way as in coal and other mines, worked in a scientific manner. The thickest layer of ozokerite found is about eighteen inches, and this layer or pocket was a great curiosity. When first removed at the bottom of the shaft, it was found to be so soft that it was shoveled out like putty. During the night it oozed into the space that had been emptied the day before; this continued for weeks, or until the pressure of the gas had become too weak to force it out.
I have been occupied in the petroleum region of Pennsylvania since 1860, have seen all the wonderful development of the oil wells, and was very much interested in contrasting the Austrian ozokerite and petroleum industry with the American. It is a good illustration of the difference between the lower class of Poles and Jews and the Yankee. Borislau, after twenty years' work, was unimproved, dirty, squalid, and brutal. It contained one school house, but no church nor printing office. None of its streets were paved, and, in the main road through the town, the mud came up to the hubs of the wagon wheels for over a mile of its length. In places, plank had to be set up on edge to keep the mud out of the houses, which were lower than the road. It contained numerous shops, where potato whisky was sold to men, women, and children. It depends on a dirty, muddy creek for its supply of water. Its houses were generally one-story, built of logs and mud.
On the other hand, Oil City, a town of the same age and size, contained eight school houses (one a high school building), twelve churches, and two printing offices. It has paved streets, which, in 1863, were as deep with mud as those in Borislau in 1879. It has no whisky shops where women and children can drink. Many of its houses are of brick, two, three, four, and five stories high. Its water works cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. All this has been done since 1860, when it did not contain forty houses.
I saw in the market place of Borislau women standing ankle deep in the mud, selling vegetables. One woman really had to build a platform of straw, on which to place a bushel of potatoes; if the straw foundation had not been there, the potatoes would have sunk out of sight. Borislau is three miles from Drohobich, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants; between the two places, in wet weather, the road was impassable. For a third of the way, it was in the bed of the creek; and I had to wait a day for the water to fall so as to navigate it in a wagon. On inquiring why they did not improve the road, I found the same difficulty as the Arkansas settler encountered with his leaky roof; when it rained he could not repair it, and when it was dry it did not need repair: so with the road to Borislau.
Ozokerite (from the Greek words, "Ozein," to smell, and "Keros," wax) is found in Turkistan, east of the Caspian Sea; in the Caucasian Mountains, in Russia; in the Carpathian Mountains, in Austria; in the Apennines, in Italy; in Texas, California, and in the Wahsatch Mountains, in the United States. Commercially, it is not worked anywhere but in Austria; although, I believe, we have in Utah a larger deposit than in any other place. I made two journeys to examine the deposits in the Wahsatch Mountains. For a distance of forty miles, it crops out in many places, and on the Minnie Maud, a stream emptying into the Colorado, I found a stratum of sand rock, from ten to twelve feet thick, filled with ozokerite.
No systematic effort has been made to ascertain the quantity of ozokerite in Utah. I saw a drift of some fourteen feet at one place, and a shaft twenty-three feet deep at another. In this shaft, the vein was about ten inches wide; and it could be traced along the slope of the hill, for several hundred feet. The largest vein of pure ozokerite is seen on Soldiers' Fork of Spanish Cañon, which enters Salt Lake Valley near the town of Provo. This vein is very much like the ozokerite of Austria, and contains between thirty and forty per cent. of white ceresin (which resembles bleached beeswax), about thirty per cent. of yellow ceresin (which resembles yellow wax), and twenty per cent. of black petroleum; the residue is dirt. Dr. J. S. Newberry, of Columbia College, and Prof. S. B. Newberry, of Cornell University, made examinations of the ozokerite found in Utah; those who are interested in the subject will find the papers published in the Engineering and Mining Journal for the year 1879.
A deposit of white ozokerite occurs on the top of the Apennine Mountains, in Italy, of which a specimen is here exhibited. An interesting story is told of its discovery. A church at Modena was robbed; among other articles taken was a quantity of wax candles. A short time afterward, a woman brought to a druggist a quantity of wax and offered it for sale. The druggist bought it and afterward suspected it consisted of the stolen candles melted down. Soon after ward she brought another lot. He had her arrested. When questioned by the magistrate, she said she found the wax in the clay on her farm, about twenty miles from the city. This story confirmed him in the belief that she had stolen the candles, or was the receiver of the stolen goods; for such a thing as a deposit of wax in the soil was unheard of. She was therefore remanded to jail. On three several days, she was brought before the court, and, when questioned, told the same story. She was a member of the church, and requested the priest to be sent for. He came, and, after an interview between them, he said it was easy to disprove her story, if it was a lie, by sending her home, in company with an officer, to investigate. The court sent the priest, who was the only one who believed her. On coming to her house, she took her pick and shovel, and going to the place at the top of the hill, she dug out of the clay a quantity of while ozokerite, proved her case, and was at once set at liberty. She performed the same service for me, and I saw her dig the specimen and heard her tell the story as I have told it to you. The hill was composed of loose clay and stones. It appeared as if it had been forced up by gas or some power from below the surface. The quantity that could be gathered, by one person, laboring constantly for a week, was only twenty-five or thirty pounds. An attempt had been made to sink a shaft; but, at a depth of fourteen feet, the pressure of the clay was sufficient to break the boards that held up the sides. The earth caved in, and the shaft was abandoned.