From the Jackson Standard, D. Mackley, Editor.
The convention met at ten o'clock and its proceedings were conducted in an orderly, business-like manner. The official proceedings will be found in another column.
At three o'clock, buggies arrived to take us on a little excursion. We first visited Marietta College. President Andrews is a very pleasant gentleman, and was very kind in taking us through the College buildings. The library is large and well selected. The rooms we visited contained some thirty-three thousand volumes. President Andrews told me that he is always anxious to receive donations of old books, old magazines. He said many of these are destroyed every year to get them out of the way, when they might be of much use as additions to the College library.
The cabinet of minerals is very interesting. So are the specimens of insects, &c. One thing interested me very much. This was the fragment of the meteor which fell in Morgan County [Muskingum County], May 1, 1860. This fragment weights 110 lbs. It is of a dark color and looks a good deal like a chunk of pig-iron.
I was at Berlin when this meteor passed through a small portion of our atmosphere. It was at midday, and it looked nearly as large and bright as the sun. I wrote a short account of it for the Cincinnati Commercial. Prof. Evans, then of Marietta College, seeing the account, corresponded with me, and he used by account of what I had seen in a pamphlet he afterwards wrote. Prof. Evans held that the main meteor was one-third of a mile in diameter and moved at the rate of, I think, seventeen miles per second.
The theory of Prof. Evans was that the meteor merely glanced through a small space of the earth's atmosphere and then moved off into space. The intense heat caused by friction in the atmosphere caused the outer surface to melt and scale off the main body. These fragments which fell to the earth are the broken pieces of these scales.
There are now three large College buildings, the third one being designed for the library exclusively. It is not yet finished.
From the College we went to the Children's Home. This is located on the east side of the Muskingum River, a mile or more above its mouth. It consists of over a hundred acres of land. The building was a farm house and is not fully adapted to the purpose for which it is now used. But the house and grounds are fine.
We had a good drink of Lemonade, when the children gave us apples, and then we visited the different rooms. In the first room were five little children, from two to five years of age. I noticed one little sick child sitting on its low seat, which warmed my deepest sympathies. It was pale and emaciated, its little hands appearing almost transparent. The development of its features showed a precocity almost startling. It was born in the Infirmary, and the ladies and gentlemen in charge informed us that they believed that its life had only been preserved thus far in consequence of the extreme care that had been taken of it. When I looked upon this patient, innocent, suffering child, born in the Infirmary, I was most forcibly reminded of Dickens' child of the Marshalsea - Little Dorrit.
We visited another room where there were some half dozen children of a larger size. Then we visited the school room. It was rather close and quite warm. A little boy was requested by one of the ladies in charge to sing. He sang an appropriate verse and was joined in the chorus by all the children. A little negro girl was then requested to sing a verse, and all the children joined in the chorus with her. One little negro boy was so sleepy that I thought evry minute that he would fall prostrate upon the floor. A little white boy was in nearly the same condition.
These children were all clean and neatly dressed. Many of them were as fine and intelligent looking children as you would see anywhere. There were fifty-six of them, and they are being sent two or three every day to the country, as good homes can be procured for them, and others are coming in daily. This is an institution organized under a general law of the State, but it is said to be the only one yet organized under this law. Those in charge appear to be thoroughly interested in the work they are engaged in, and they regard it not so much as a duty for which they are paid, as a Christian duty for which they expect a higher reward hereafter. This institution reflects great honor upon the State of Ohio for passing such a law, and upon the people of Washington County who have carried the law into practical operation. It is a great advance in the direction of a higher and nobler Christian civilization.
As we were leaving, these little waifs all came out, some three or four of them being of the lately despised African race. They clapped their little hands and cheered us. May God bless them.
As we returned to the city, we crossed the bridge and drove through Harmar and then back to the hotel. Our meeting at night was pleasant and agreeable. Too much smoking, but no drunkenness.
I had resolved to start home on Friday morning, but several citizens urged me to go out to Cow Run. My friend Stimson was particularly solicitous that I should go, and finally I consented.
We started at seven o'clock in buggies and express wagons and had nine miles to go. We went over the hills, a pretty rough country. Judge Chamberlain took me and Dumble of the Marietta Register, Chapman of the Pomeroy Telegraph, and McFarland of the Portsmouth Tribune. We arrived at Cow Run at ten o'clock. This is a small branch which empties into the Little Muskingum. The bottom is narrow, and steep hills arise on both sides. The derricks occupy a distance of half a mile up the bottom, and then up the little hollows on the right haand side as you go up the little creel. Then they are scattered up the steep hill on the right, to its very summit. Where there is a narrow branch, or level space on the steep hillside, there a derrick towers up. But they are the most numerous on the little bottom of Cow Run. They are thick as the chimneys in a closely built town.
Did you ever see one of these derricks? Four sills, some twenty feet long, are framed together and made level. A piece of hewn timber, eight inches square and fifty feel long, is set upon each corner of this frame, and the tops are drawn in until they approach within eight feet of each other. They are then fastened by cross pieces and braces. In the center at the top is a pulley, over which a rope passes. One end is fastened to the top of the drill, and the other passes around a shaft. Upon this shaft is a drum. Around this drum passes a belt. The belt passes around another drum at the engine, and thus the rope is wound around the shaft and draws the drill up towards the pulley at the top of the derrick.
There are over one hundred derricks in view at one time. Derricks are being erected. They stand over new flowing wells. They stand over wells where the oil is being pumped up. They stand over weels which are being repaired and over abandoned wells. The wells all have names, such as "School House Well," "Eureka Well," "Grecian Bend Well," &c. A well was put down on the lot owned by the school district, and now the district has realized from it ten thousand dollars. They do not know what to do with the money. The party who bores pays the owner of the "territory" one-third of the oil as royalty, or rent.
A company over on the Little Muskingum, two miles north, forces water over one hill and to the top of another into two great tanks, and from these all the engines are supplied with fresh water. This company charges $25.00 per month to supply each engine, when it runs day and night.
The wells now produce in the aggregate, 400 barrels crude of oil, worth eleven cents per gallon, or $4.50 per barrel. Pipes lead from the different wells to one point, and there a powerful little engine forces the oil through a pipe, over a high hill, five miles, to the Ohio River. A dial indicates the amount of pressure. When I saw it, 320 pounds to the inch was being put on. As the Ohio River must be lower than Cow run, I suggested to the engineer that a siphon might be used instead of an engine. But he said the friction of the oil in the pipe would render this impracticable.
I learned a great many interesting things about this oil business, but I fear I shall be tedious. I will, however, note a few more things about it.
The drill weighs from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds. Some have a number of wooden rods attached to them and then the rope. some have no rods, but the rope is fastened directly to the drill. These rods are thirty-six feet long and screwed together. The drill is worked the same as the pump. A cross beam is balanced in the center, and the engine at one end, and of course the other end of the beam has a corresponding motion. To this end is fastened the rope. So the drill is raised a foot or two and permitted to drop. A man keeps turning the drill, which is thus made to fall each time in a differen tposition, and thus the hole is made round. By this turning, a screw is all the time being operated at the upper end of the rope, and the drill is each time lowered, or screwed downwards, as the hole deepens.
The wells are from 200 to 1,600 feet deep. One is being drilled which is now over 1,600 feet deep, and it has cost $30,000.
Some wells will "flow," or throw up a barrel or two of oil every half hour. This may continue a month or more, when the periods will change, and the flow will be once an hour. After a month or so the period may again be changed. Sometimes the oil will be thrown fifty feel above the top of the derrick. Gas is almost constantly coming up. It can be seen like the glimmering of heat on a very warm day. This gas has a most pungent and disagreeable smell.
The oil does not look like I supposed it did. It is very thin and fluid and of a sky-blue-slate color. It is quite cold. It is very inflammable, and frequently the gas becomes ignited and flashes to the oil. Then there is an explosion, and the derricks, tank &c., are gone beyond redemption, as they are always thoroughly saturated with oil. It is too dangerous a place to have drunken men, and no one is permitted to sell whisky there.
The surface of the water in Cow Run is covered with floating oil and exhibits every color of the rainbow, as seen when light is resolved into its original elements by the prism. Sunlight has been decomposed by some unknown process in nature and stowed away deep in the bowels of the earth, perhaps millions of years before Moses was hidden in the bullrushes, or Abraham went forth to battle. And now it is brought forth, and from this long hidden light is made the rich and glorious aniline dyes, which far surpass the famous Eastner purple, and now the beautiful woman of 1870 is arrayed in silks, the colors of which far surpass the glories of the court of Solomon.
But I must let Cow Run slide.
And now a parting word to Marietta. It is a fine old place. I did not see a drunken man, nor a doggery, nor did I hear an oath sworn in the place. Of course there is vice and immorality there, and even crime. But these are rare. The people are refined. There is more aristocracy of learning than of wealth. The place is behind the age in some things. The streets are not graded, and when it is wet weather they are mud holes.
I never saw so many trees in a city. Looking down from the top of the College buildings, one can scarcely see the houses. It looks like a dense forest. And what is more beautiful is, that the great bulk and body of these trees are maples. There are some elms and other trees, including evergreens. But then it is one great maple forest. I consider the American maple the most beautiful tree in the world. And the elm next.
My old friend, Col. David Alban, drew a little on his imagination. He said that the whippoorwill could be heard in the heart of the city - that this lonely bird had never forsaken Marietta since it was originally settled in 1788. But he finally took that back and said that it might be on the hills back of the city where it could be heard.
I have left myself no room to speak of the many worthy men whom I met in Marietta. I will only mention one, the chairman of our evening meeting, S. S. Knowles, Esq. He is every way worthy, and I was gratified to hear that there is a strong inclination to send him to Congress. He is about the only man in Marietta who showed a decent respect to Mrs. Longley and Miss Bates when they were in the place.
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