SOMETHING ABOUT OIL. 275 



tling each other for the largest share of their master's al- 

 lowance. 



At first it was generally supposed that one locality was 

 as likely as another to yield the oleaginous fluid, and ex- 

 periments innumerable were instituted wherever men could 

 be found whom the infectious fever had reached. We now 

 know that not one neighborhood in a thousand affords the 

 geological conditions requisite to success. Another pre- 

 cipitate and erroneous conclusion was that which assumed 

 the surface configuration of the earth to be the only essen- 

 tial condition of oil accumulation. Wherever a region 

 could be found with a physical geography like that of Ve- 

 nango County — wherever a creek like Oil Creek had scored 

 a country underlaid by sandstone like Northwestern Penn- 

 sylvania — there might have been seen the men whose ex- 

 perienced olfactories were employed to test the odor of 

 every bog, and stain, and film which prying eyes could 

 bring to light. Especially if such a creek were bordered 

 by a flat walled in by rocky bluffs — but most especially if 

 such a flat could be found at the fork of two streams, en- 

 vironed by rocks and hills of Pennsylvania sandstone, were 

 the " oil-smellers" in high ecstasies. Happy the squatter 

 whose steep and rugged hill-sides and narrow intervales 

 afforded these first-class evidences of " productive prop- 

 erty." I know of many an instance in which his land was 

 tripled in market value by the magic touch of the magician 

 of the hazel wand. The same kind of sandstone was essen- 

 tial; and it is marvelous that Nature had so disposed it 

 that the oil-seeker could in every instance detect also the 

 " first," " second," and " third" sandstones after the Venan- 

 go style. No matter upon what formation the exploration 

 might be progressing — perhaps a thousand feet below or 

 above the geological horizon of Venango County — these 

 oil-hunters, who had a wisdom above geology, could infal- 



