<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
<h4>In Dixie—Oil and natural gas, at Witten's
Bottom—The Long Reach—Photographing
crackers—Visitors in camp.</h4>
<p><span class="smcap">Above Marietta</span>, 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° 43' 26") touches the
Ohio at the mouth of Proctor's Run (121½
miles).</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page78" id="page78"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page79" id="page79"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page80" id="page80"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page81" id="page81"></SPAN></span>
own fuel; and lately, he had struck a bank of
firebrick clay which might some day be a
"good thing for th' gals."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page82" id="page82"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy
ledge at the summit of a rocky bank, ten miles
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page83" id="page83"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page84" id="page84"></SPAN></span>
and spice each dish with commendations of
W——'s skill at making the most of her few
utensils.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page85" id="page85"></SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page86" id="page86"></SPAN></span>
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!"</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page87" id="page87"></SPAN></span>
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