A promise to look out for “Jim” satisfied the verdant backwoodsman, who probably had never been ten miles from his shanty and deemed “up No’th” a place about the size of a Tennessee hunting-ground! The South-Penn and the Forest Oil-Companies, branches of the Standard, have drilled considerably in Kentucky and Tennessee, sometimes finding oil in regular strata and occasionally encountering irregular formations. More operating is required to determine precisely what place to assign these pebbles on the beach as sources of oil-production. Fair women, pure Bourbon and men extra plucky, No wonder blue-grass folks esteem themselves lucky— But wait till the oil-boom gets down to Kentucky! Let Fortune assume forms and fancies Protean, No matter for that, there will rise a loud pæan So long as oil gladdens the proud Tennesseean! [Illustration: Map of VENANGO COUNTY Pennsylvania ] [Illustration: EARLY OPERATORS ON OIL CREEK. WM. BARNSDALL. GEO. H. BISSELL. DR. F. B. BREWER. DR. A. G. EGBERT. JONATHAN WATSON. COL. E. L. DRAKE. DAVID EMERY. CHARLES HYDE. DAVID CROSSLEY. ] V. A HOLE IN THE GROUND. THE FIRST WELL DRILLED FOR PETROLEUM—THE MEN WHO STARTED OIL ON ITS TRIUMPHANT MARCH—COLONEL DRAKE’S OPERATIONS—SETTING HISTORY RIGHT—HOW TITUSVILLE WAS BOOMED AND A GIANT INDUSTRY ORIGINATED—MODEST BEGINNING OF THE GREATEST ENTERPRISE ON EARTH—SIDE DROPPINGS THAT THROW LIGHT ON AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT. ---------- “Was it not time that Cromwell should come?”—_Edwin Paxton Hood._ “He who would get at the kernel must crack the shell.”—_Plautus._ “We should at least do something to show that we have lived.”—_Cicero._ “I have tapped the mine.”—_E. L. Drake._ “Petroleum has come to be King.”—_W. D. Gunning._ “It is our mission to illuminate all creation.”—_Robert Bonner._ “Tell the truth or trump, but take the trick.”—_Mark Twain._ “How far that little candle throws his beams!”—_Shakespeare._ “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”—_St. James iii:5._ “Judge of the size of the statue of Hercules from that of the foot.”—_Latin Proverb._ ----------