In Dixie--Oil and natural gas, at Witten's Bottom--The Long
Reach--Photographing crackers--Visitors in camp.
Above Marietta, Saturday, May 12th.--Since the middle of yesterday
afternoon we have been in Dixie,--that is, when we are on the West
Virginia shore. The famous Mason and Dixon Line (lat. 39 deg. 43' 26")
touches the Ohio at the mouth of Proctor's Run (121-1/2 miles).
There was a heavy fog this morning, on land and river. But through
shifting rifts made by the morning breeze, we had kaleidoscopic,
cloud-framed pictures of the dark, jutting headlands which hem us in;
of little white cabins clustered by the country road which on either
bank crawls along narrow terraces between overtopping steeps and
sprawling beach, or winds through fertile bottoms, according to
whether the river approaches or recedes from its inclosing bluffs; of
hillside fields, tipped at various angles of ascent, sometimes green
with springing grain, but oftenest gray or brown or yellow, freshly
planted,--charming patches of color, in this somber-hued world of
sloping woodland.
At Williamson's Island (134 miles) the fog lifted. The air was heavy
with the odor of petroleum. All about us were the ugly, towering
derricks of oil and natural gas wells--Witten's Bottom on the right,
with its abutting hills; the West Virginia woods across the river,
and the maple-strewn island between, all covered with scaffolds. The
country looks like a rumpled fox-and-geese board, with pegs stuck
all over it. A mile and a half below lies Sistersville, W. Va., the
emporium of this greasy neighborhood--great red oil-tanks and smoky
refineries its chiefest glory; crude and raw, like the product it
handles. We landed at Witten's Bottom,--W----, the Boy, and I,--while
the Doctor, philosophically preferring to take the oily elephant for
granted, piloted Pilgrim to the rendezvous a mile below.
Oil was "struck" here two or three years ago, and now within a
distance of a few miles there are hundreds of wells--"two hun'rd in
this yere gravel alone, sir!" I was told by a red-headed man in a red
shirt, who lived with his numerous family in a twelve-foot-square box
at the rear of a pumping engine. An engine serves several wells,--the
tumbling-rods, rudely boxed in, stretching off through the fields
and over the hills to wherever needed. The operatives dwell in little
shanties scattered conveniently about; in front of each is a vertical
half-inch pipe, six or eight feet high, bearing a half bushel of
natural-gas flame which burns and tosses night and day, winter
and summer, making the Bottom a warm corner of the earth, when the
unassisted temperature is in the eighties. It is a bewildering scene,
with all these derricks thickly scattered around, engines noisily
puffing, walking-beams forever rearing and plunging, the country
cobwebbed with tumbling-rods and pipe lines, the shanties of the
operatives with their rude lamp-posts, and the face of Nature so
besmeared with the crude output of the wells that every twig and leaf
is thick with grease.
Just above Witten's commences the Long Reach of the Ohio--a charming
panorama, for sixteen and a half miles in a nearly straight line
to the southwest. Little towns line the alternating bottoms, and
farmsteads are numerous on the slopes. But they are rocky and narrow,
these gentle shoulders of the hills, and a poor class of folk occupy
them--half fishers, half farmers, a cross between my Round Bottom
friend and the houseboat nomads.
A picturesquely-dilapidated log house, with whitewashed porch in
front, and a vine arbor at the rear, attracted our attention at the
foot of the reach, near Grape Island. I clambered up, to photograph
it. The ice was broken by asking for a drink of water. A gaunt girl of
eighteen, the elder of two, with bare feet, her snaky hair streaming
unkempt about a smirking face, went with a broken-nosed pitcher to a
run, which could be heard splashing over its rocky bed near by. The
meanwhile, I took a seat in the customary arcade between the living
room and kitchen, and talked with her fat, greasy, red-nosed father,
who confided to me that he was "a pi'neer from way back." He occupied
his own land--a rare circumstance among these riverside "crackers;"
had a hundred and thirty acres, worth twenty dollars the acre; "jist
yon ways," back of the house, in the cliff-side, there was a coal vein
two feet thick, as yet only "worked" for his own fuel; and lately, he
had struck a bank of firebrick clay which might some day be a "good
thing for th' gals."
On leaving, I casually mentioned my desire to photograph the family on
the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house
outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the
common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin,
the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of
transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree
which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they
had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being
reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' his ha'r,
and wash'n' and fix'n' up, afore hay'n' his pictur' taken;" but the
old fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remonstrance against this
transformation to the commonplace, on the part of his women-folk.
However, there was no profit in arguing with them, and I took my
snap-shot with a conviction that the film was being wasted.
We were in several small towns to-day, in pursuance of the policy of
distributing our shopping, so as to see as much of the shore life as
practicable. Chief among them have been New Matamoras (141 miles) and
St. Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and Newport, in Ohio (155
miles). Rather dingy villages, these--each, after their kind, with a
stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of
the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men
lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one
as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever
to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore--for
cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with
the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars
chucking noisily in their roomy locks.
Every now and then we run across bunches of oil and gas wells;
and great signs, like those advertising boards which greet railway
travelers approaching our large cities, are here and there perched
upon the banks, notifying steamboat pilots, in letters a foot
high, that a pipe line here crosses the river, the vicinity being
consequently unsafe for mooring.
Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy ledge at the summit of a
rocky bank, ten miles above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or so
back of us is the country road, which winds along at the foot of
a precipitous steep. It is narrow quarters here, and too near the
highway for comfort, but nothing better seemed to offer at the time we
needed it; and the outlook is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and
elms, across the broad river into West Virginia.
We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands were still clambering over
the rocks with Pilgrim's cargo, rather glad that there was no more of
it, when our first camp-bore appeared--a middling-sized man, florid
as to complexion, with a mustache and goatee, and in a suit of seedy
black, surmounted by a crushed-in Derby hat; and, after the fashion of
the country, giving evidence, on his collarless white shirt, of a free
use of chewing tobacco. I have seldom met a fellow with better staying
qualities. He was a strawberry grower, he said, and having been into
Newport, a half dozen miles up river, was walking to his home, which
was a mile or two off in the hills. Would we object if, for a few
moments, he tarried here by the roadside? and perhaps we could
accommodate him with a drink of water? Patiently did he watch the
preparation of dinner, and spice each dish with commendations of
W----'s skill at making the most of her few utensils.
Right glibly he chattered on; now about the decadence of womankind;
now about strawberry-growing upon these Ohio hills--with the crop just
coming on, and berries selling at a shilling to-day, in Marietta, when
they ought to be worth twenty cents; now on politics, and of course
he was a Populist; now on the hard times, and did we believe in free
silver? He would take no bite with us, but sat and talked and talked,
despite plain hints, growing plainer with the progress of time, that
his family needed him at nightfall. Dinner was eaten, and dishes
washed; the others left on a botanical round-up, and I produced my
writing materials, with remarks upon the lateness of the hour. At last
our guest arose, shook the grass from his clothes, with a shake of
hands bade me good-night, wishing me to convey his "good-bye" to the
rest of our party, and as politely as possible expressed the great
pleasure which the visit had given him.
Some farmer boys came down the hillside to fish at the bank, and
talked pleasantly of their work and of the ever-changing phases of
the river. Other farmers passed our roadside door, in wagons, on
buckboards, by horseback, and on foot; in neighborly tone, but with
ill-disguised curiosity in their eyes, wishing me good evening. When
the long twilight was almost gone, and the moon an hour high over the
purple dusk of the West Virginia hills, the botanists returned,
aglow with their exercise, and rich with trophies of blue and dwarf
larkspur, pink and white stone-crop, trailing arbutus, and great
laurel.
And then, as we were preparing to retire, a sleek and dapper fellow,
though with clothes rather the worse for wear, came trudging along
the road toward Marietta. Seeing our camp, he asked for a drink. Being
apparently disposed to tarry, the Doctor, to get him started, offered
to walk a piece with him. Our comrade staid out so long, that at last
I went down the road in search of him, and found the pair sitting on
a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they had been always friends. The
stranger had revealed to the Doctor that he was a street fakir, "by
perfesh," and had "struck it rich" in Chicago during the World's
Fair, but somehow had lost the greater part of his gains, and was
now associated with his brother, who had a junk-boat; the brother was
"well heeled," and staid and kept store at the boat, while the fakir,
as the walking partner, "rustled 'round 'mong th' grangers, to stir
up trade." The Doctor had, in their talk, let slip something about
certain Florida experiences, and when I arrived on the scene was being
skillfully questioned by his companion as to the probabilities of
"a feller o' my perfesh ketch'n' on, down thar?" The result of this
pumping process must have been satisfactory: for when we parted with
him, the fakir declared he was "go'n' try't on thar, next winter, 'f I
bust me bottom dollar!"