NACOGDOCHES COUNTY. 273 



"Subsequently John F. Carlee, now of the State Geological Survey of Penn- 

 sylvania, operating for himself and others, drilled a well four miles northeast 

 of Oil Spring, on Caney Creek, Skillern tract; also one on the land now be- 

 longing to Dr. Leak, one mile west of the village of Melrose. They found 

 but little oil in the first well, and not reaching oil in the second at a depth of 

 eighty feet, the work was abandoned, probably from want of capital. 



" The next work was done by B. F. Hitchcock, now manager of the Pe- 

 troleum Prospecting Company. He succeeded in interesting E. H Farrar, 

 of New Orleans, in the enterprise. Mr. Farrar organized a company, with 

 capital stock fixed at $100,000, for the purpose of drilling wells at Oil Spring, 

 sending to Pennsylvania for expert drillers and machinery. The manage- 

 ment of the company in the field was placed in the hands of J. E. Pierce, of 

 New Orleans. The first well, eight-inch casing, found oil at about seventy 

 feet, the drilling being entirely in sand and apparently drift. It was a flow- 

 ing well, and the first day some two hundred fifty or three hundred barrels 

 of oil went to waste before it was brought under control and capped. It 

 ceased to be a flowing well after the first day. ' Subsequently the oil was 

 pumped into tanks. This company continued drilling wells, with some in- 

 termission, until the spring of 1889, since which time they have been bailing 

 oil, say twice a week, from some of the wells and storing it in tanks. 



" Five different companies have at different times been organized and 

 operated for oil well boring since 1887, the total number of wells drilled up 

 to date being about ninety. Of these companies the Petroleum Prospecting 

 Company and the Lubricating Oil Company alone remain in the field. The 

 Lubricating Oil Company is making a business of bailing, preparing, and 

 marketing oil. Forty wells have been drilled on this property, and twenty 

 of these are now oil bearing." 



The receptacle of mineral oil is apparently accidental, the oil having been 

 reported from nearly all geological periods from the Lower Silurian up, in- 

 cluding limestones, sandstones, shales, and sands. The transporting agency 

 was water, and with the water it was often collected in caverns as reservoirs, or 

 absorbed by any porous material with which it came in contact. From these 

 receptacles it either exudes and floats as a film on ponds, lakes, and streams, 

 or flows from fissures as springs, or from bored wells. 



If an oil bearing cavity or porous stratum be penetrated by a well boring 

 the first product would be gas, the next oil, and finally water. 



In the Tertiary lignitic regions of Texas the conditions of vegetation, de- 

 composition, and retention have been of the latter character. The forma- 

 tion, consisting of interstratified beds of clay and sand, has offered no oppor- 

 tunity for any extensive caverns, and whatever oil is now found absorbed has 

 been transported until it met with a retentive absorbent, such as the green- 



