The command reached the oil works about noon, and a detail was sent forward to Elizabeth City, while the main body halted at Oiltown. There were a large number of wells in operation, worked by steam engines, and up to the last moment the oil men kept busily engaged, but after awhile they learned the character of their visitors, and surmising their object, the workmen turned away from the wells, and shutting off steam, remarked, with doleful faces, “I guess oiling is played out now,” and of a surety their guess was correct, for destruction was the watchword of Jones’ brigade at Oiltown, and nowhere, except in a powder mill, could it be more speedily and generally accomplished. The oil was all around, some of it in barrels piled up, and some in flatboats in the river, the boats being built water-tight and filled with the oil, some of them holding a thousand barrels each, which was run into them by pipes directly from the wells. These boats, after being set on fire, were cut loose from the shore and allowed to float away, and as they burst, letting the blazing oil spread over the water from shore to shore, the truly wonderful spectacle of a river on fire was presented, while to heighten the grandeur of the scene, explosion after explosion boomed out upon the night air, and columns of dense black smoke twined with the red flame from the wrecks of the boats, loomed skyward a hundred feet from the blazing sea; and on shore the oil barrels were burning and bursting, their contents flowing in streams of liquid flame all over the ground, and from the wells themselves great fiery pillars rose up, and added to this, the many buildings contributed their quota of flame to the great conflagration; in fact no better illustration, on a small scale, could be presented of the popular idea of the burning brimstone lake, where “The devil sits in his easy chair, Sipping his sulphur tea, And gazing out, with a pensive air, On the broad bitumen sea,” for from pump to river all was flame. The amount of oil destroyed was estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand barrels, and this has been fully confirmed by reports of owners published since the war; and taking into consideration the destruction of boats, machinery, buildings, &c., the damage was immense. As soon as the destruction was complete, the raiders went out into the night, leaving a bitter remembrance of their visit in the hearts of the people who dwelt on the desolated shore of the Little Kanawha, and many an oilman was heard to wish, in substance, as the brigade marched away, that “he might never be any nearer hell than he had been that night.”