The Tuxpam field, the heart of the “line,” will ultimately go to salt water. Of this there is no question. Every pool of oil that has been drained--now three in number--has given its 100,000,000 barrels, and the steaming, brackish water, still under terrific pressure, has wiped out the property, often between sunset and sunrise--a few hours between 50,000 barrels a day and nothing. Dos Bocas at the northernmost end of the “line,” came in on July 4, 1906, hailed as the greatest well of history, blew out her casing, caught fire and burned for months, a torch of gas and flame 850 feet high, till (if it was oil and not gas she burned) she had easily spent her 100,000,000 barrels. Another great British well, Portrero del Llano No. 4, flowed eight years, giving nearly her 100,000,000 to industry, and went to salt water over night. The Casiano field, of the Doheny interests, paid a similar toll. Cerro Azul No. 4 of the same company came in at a full rate of 162,000 barrels a day. She has never been allowed to flow full, for the whole field is owned by the company, and the pool is considered safe from drainage. Further south, the Doheny companies have, in 1921, opened another vast field, the Chapapote Nuñez--but that, still, is “on the line.” During the past year the Naranjos field has been showing salt water; the Chinampa, with a hundred wells located on a relatively few acres, is being drained at top speed, and salt water has been cutting closer in at its edges. To-day the Zacamixtle camp, the last of the “line,” which was drilled like mad by scores of crews putting down wells that cost in Mexico $100,000 each, has been narrowed to a strip of an oil river only a few hundred yards wide. With Chinampa and Zacamixtle gone, only the Cerro Azul, the sixty square miles of the Chapapote field, and the adjacent Toteco pool will remain on the “line” with no reserves save to the south, in a territory recently proved by the “Toteco” and “Chapapote” districts, or to the north, in the Tampico or Panuco field proper. This last is a heavy oil section, and here, too, the largest portion of the territory is owned by the Doheny companies. Why, with this dwindling field, this steady reduction in reserves, has there not been more development in Mexico? You know the basic answer--revolution. But through revolution and graft and theft and murder the American operators in the oil fields, working for British and American companies, have kept on the job. Revolution is not the only answer.