There
are no mosquitoes as yet, but burly May-chafers come stupidly dashing
against our tent, and the toads are piping merrily.

CHAPTER VII.

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