Birds and All Nature, Vol. VI, No. 3, October 1899

It has been observed that both sexes of all the varieties continue to improve in appearance after each moult until they are 3 years old. Birds of 1 year old have never attained to their full beauty, this being especially apparent in the more ample development of the tail-feathers of the cock as he becomes older. At from five to six months old they are fit for table use, their meat white, tender, and well-flavored.

The Silver-Spangled Hamburg, or Silver Pheasant, as it is commonly called there, is a breed that has for generations been known in England. In Lancashire this variety had been brought to a very high standard of excellence years before poultry shows were thought of, and, as Wright observes, all our modern skill and careful breeding have been unable to improve upon the old breed of Mooneys, as they were called, which were absolutely perfect in point of feather. The spangling, so large, round, and rich in color, was really something to be wondered at and shows a skill and enthusiasm in breeding which has about it something of the marvelous.

Plymouth Rock Hen and Chickens. – In March, 1873, Rev. H. H. Ramsdell thus describes the origin of this valued fowl:

"Some thirty years since John Giles, Esq., introduced a fowl into this vicinity – Putnam, Conn. – called the Black Java. Its plumage was black and glossy, its size large, pullets sometimes reaching 11 pounds in weight. It was an unusually hardy bird, with a dark, slate-colored, smooth leg and the bottom of the feet yellow. The hens proved good layers and of extra quality for the table. I sold a few of these birds to a Mr. Thayer of Pomfret, of whom Mr. George Clark of Woodstock, Conn., purchased some he supposed the same. Mr. Clark, passing Mr. Joseph Spaulding's yard one day, noticed his fine flock of Dominiques and proposed bringing a few of his Javas over to cross with them to increase the size. Mr. Spaulding accepted the offer, and when the chickens were grown rejected the black ones and those with double comb, reserving to breed from only the single-comb birds, which retained the Dominique color, or near it. One of the first products from the eggs of this cross was a hen which weighed 9¾ pounds. We soon had a fine flock of them. The fowls were spread around the neighborhood and were much sought after, but had as yet no name. A gentleman asked me what I called them. I said 'Plymouth Rock.' The name passed from one to another and they were soon generally known by that name."

The general characteristics of the cock are: Comb single, upright, and neatly arched, notched, or serrated; body large and deep; back broad and short; breast deep, broad, and full; thighs large and strong; size very large, ranging from nine to twelve pounds; general shape massive, but compact; carriage upright and commanding.

THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA

PRIN. WM. I. MARSHALL,Lawndale School

THE Colorado River is pre-eminently "The River of Cañons." Formed in eastern Utah by the junction of the Green River, rising in northwest Wyoming, and the Grand, which has its sources in the mountain rim which walls in the Middle Park of the State of Colorado, not a mile of the Colorado River is in the state of Colorado.

About two-fifths of its nearly 2,000 miles, reckoning from the sources of the Green, which is the main stream, flows through cañons, the series culminating in magnitude and grandeur in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado in Arizona. In 1875, the Government Printing Office at Washington printed in a finely illustrated quarto volume of 291 pages, under the modest and unpretentious title of "Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872 Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution," the fascinating and graphic story of one of the most perilous explorations ever undertaken by man, and one whose origin and successful outcome were due to the scientific enthusiasm, the great endurance, the fertility of resources and the dauntless courage of Maj. J. W. Powell. Few men with two arms would have dared to enter upon, or could successfully have completed the task, and he had left his good right arm on a battle-field of our civil war.

In 1882, the United States Geological Survey, of which Maj. Powell was then director, printed Vol. II of its Monographs, being the "Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, by Capt. C. E. Dutton, U.S.A.," a sumptuous quarto of 264 pages, with maps and splendid illustrations.

These two books are, and must ever remain the great authorities on "The River of Cañons," and I shall only write briefly of the route to and scenic splendors of the Grand Cañon.

It is accessible from various points along the Santa Fe Railway, but most easily at present by a stage ride of seventy-three miles, at an elevation above the sea varying from 6,866 to nearly 9,000 feet, from Flagstaff, Arizona – a beautifully situated mountain town at the southern base of the San Francisco Peaks, a cluster of volcanic mountains, the loftiest of which rises nearly 13,000 feet above the sea, and some 6,000 feet above Flagstaff.

At Flagstaff is the famous Lowell Astronomical Observatory, and about it are many points of much interest, especially Walnut Creek Cañon, with its extensive ruins of the cliff dwellers' houses built midway up the face of the almost vertical cliffs.

The first and last thirds of the stage ride to the Cañon are through the great Conconino Forest of long leaved pines – much scattered and with no underbrush – but commonly with splendid grass and unnumbered wild flowers covering all the open spaces between them.

The middle third is over a more desert region, but not destitute of grass, and with stunted pines and cedars growing on most of the ridges and hills along the way.

For the past two years there has been little rain and the route last July was much more dusty than when I went over it first in 1895, and deemed it one of the most enjoyable stage rides I had ever taken; but rains late in July made it much pleasanter when I returned in August, this year, for a third visit.

Along the whole seventy-three miles there is no lake, pond, river, creek, brook, rivulet, or rill, no running water except springs at two points many miles apart which have been piped into troughs for stock.

This absence of water over so wide an expanse seems at first wholly incompatible with the splendid forests of stately pines, with some aspens and scrubby oaks interspersed, and the luxuriant grass and innumerable flowers.

They are kept alive by the moisture of the heavy snows of winter, and the coolness of the nights in the warmer months, checking the evaporation, and by occasional rains in summer, mostly in July and August.

We are promised a branch railroad in the near future from the main line of the Santa Fe to the Cañon.

All previous observations of cañons fail utterly to give any adequate ideas of the immensity and the splendor of this, "the sublimest spectacle on earth." No narrow crack in the earth's crust is this cañon, but a vast chasm 217 miles long, from five to twelve miles wide and from 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep, with a great river rolling tumultuously along its bottom, miles away from us as the crow flies, and nearly a mile below us vertically.

As there are very few places where it is possible to climb down to the river, one might perish from thirst while wandering along the brink of this cañon, and having in plain view at many points one of the greatest rivers of the west coast of America.

It is the only cañon on earth vast enough to have scores of mountains within it.

It is a double cañon, i. e. a cañon within a cañon.

The outer cañon is from 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, and from five to twelve miles wide.

Its general direction is east and west, but the mighty river, which in ancient geologic ages eroded this vast abyss, curved, like all rivers, now this way and now that, so that each wall is recessed in mighty amphitheaters, between which comparatively narrow promontories or points run out from one to six miles into the cañon.

From the base of the mighty palisade which forms the walls of the outer cañon stretches a plateau 5, 8, 10, or 12 miles wide, to the equally lofty palisade which forms the opposite wall of the outer cañon, and somewhere near the middle of this plateau is sunk the inner cañon, another 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, with a width at the top varying from one-half to three-fourths of a mile, and in its somber depths rolls the ever turbid Colorado, ceaselessly at its endless labor of cutting down the mountains and sweeping their ruins to the sea.

Scattered all over this plateau are the remains of what were once long promontories like the points on which we now walk or ride far out towards the middle of the cañon, but which have weathered so that they are now lines of hills and mountains.

Real mountains many of them are, for from their bases on the plateau, 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the bottom of the inner cañon, they rise 1,500 to 2,500 feet, nearly or quite to the level of the tops of the cliffs bounding the outer cañon.

Nearly all the length of the cañon is through sandstones, and limestones, and shales, resplendent with the colors which add so much to the beauty of Rocky Mountain scenery.

The almost uniform horizontality of stratification of these rocks demonstrates that the erosion of the cañon was little aided or affected by any violent upheavals or disturbances of the rocks.

We see clearly about twenty-five miles each way along the cañon, and somewhat indistinctly probably another twenty-five or thirty miles each way, and everywhere is the same indescribable splendor of color and of beauty of form.

It is a new "Holy City," and whether viewed from above, by a ride or walk along the edge of the cañon, or from the multitudinous turns and loops of the trail by which one can descend on horseback to the plateau and ride across to the edge of the inner cañon, whence a path enables us to safely climb on foot down to the river's edge, everywhere we seem to be gazing on the ruins of cities, palaces, towers, and temples, such as might have been builded by the gnomes and genii of the "Arabian Nights."

Speaking of these weather-sculptured buttes or mountains of bare and splendidly colored rock which stand within the outer cañon, Dutton says:

"Some of these are gorgeous pagodas, sculptured in the usual fashion, and ending in sharp finials at the summit. Others are the cloister buttes with wing-walls and gables, panels and alcoves. All are quarried out upon a superlative scale of magnitude, and every one of them is a marvel. The great number and intricacy of these objects confuse the senses and do not permit the eye to rest. The mind wanders incessantly from one to another and cannot master the multitude of things crowded at once upon its attention. There are scores of these structures, any one of which, if it could be placed by itself upon some distant plain, would be regarded as one of the great wonders of the world," and of the colors he says:

"The color-effects are rich and wonderful. They are due to the inherent colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great series of strata in the Plateau Province, the carboniferous has its own range of characteristic colors, which might serve to distinguish it even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale-gray, with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone appears, showing a mottled surface of pale-pinkish hue. Underneath this member are nearly 1,000 feet of the Lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat masked by the talus shot down from the gray, cherty limestones at the summit. Beneath the Lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2,000 to 3,000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar one. Most of the red strata of the west have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these are rather purplish-red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color-mass of the cañon, for the expanse of rock surface displayed is more than half in the Red Wall group. It is less brilliant than the fiery-red of the Aubrey sandstones, but is still quite strong and rich. Beneath are the deep-browns of the lower carboniferous.

"The dark iron-black of the horn-blendic schists revealed in the lower gorge makes but little impression upon the boundless expanse of bright colors above."

OIL WELLS

OIL IS found in Pennsylvania in oil-bearing sand-rocks, which are considered as the reservoirs in which the distilled product has found a permanent lodgment. The depth of the oil-sand or sand-rock in this state is from 800 to 1,900 feet. There are often several strata, one above the other, containing oil.

It is the uniform experience that the lightest oils are found in the lowest sandstones, while the heaviest oils are drawn from the shallowest wells; and as we approach the surface where it is gathered from the pools dug to the depth of only a few feet, it becomes sticky, semi-fluid, and finally a solid asphalt.

Man made no attempt to bore a deep hole through soil and rock, hundreds of feet down, to reach oil, until the summer of 1859. The first oil company was formed in 1854, with Mr. George H. Bissell at its head, which bored the first oil well in the summer of 1859 under the direction of E. L. Drake. It was about the middle of June that "Uncle Billy Smith" and his two sons arrived in Titusville, on Oil Creek, Pa., the scene of operations.

"The pipe was successfully driven to the rock, thirty-six feet, and about the middle of August the drill was started. The drillers averaged about three feet a day, making slight 'indications' all the way down. Saturday afternoon, August 28, 1859, as Mr. Smith and his boys were about to quit for the day, the drill dropped into one of those crevices, common alike in oil and salt borings, a distance of about six inches, making a total depth of the whole well sixty-nine and one-half feet. They withdrew the tools, and all went home till Monday morning. On Sunday afternoon, however, 'Uncle Billy' went down to reconnoiter, and peering in he could see a fluid within eight or ten feet of the surface. He plugged one end of a bit of rain-water spout and let it down with a string, and drew it up filled with petroleum.

"That night the news reached the village, and Drake when he came down next morning bright and early found the old man and his boys proudly guarding the spot, with several barrels of petroleum standing about. The pump was at once adjusted, and the well commenced producing at the rate of about twenty-five barrels a day. The news spread like a prairie fire, and the village was wild with excitement. The country people round about came pouring in to see the wonderful well. Mr. Watson jumped on a horse and hurried straightway to secure a lease of the spring on the McClintock farm, near the mouth of the creek. Mr. Bissell, who had made arrangements to be informed of the result by telegraph, bought up all the Pennsylvania oil-stock it was possible to get hold of, and four days afterwards was at the well."

This memorable strike ushered in the petroleum era. It now only remained to develop this "bonanza." The condition of things on Oil Creek in 1865 is given as follows: "The surface of the whole country was saturated with oil from the leaking barrels, the overflow and enormous wastage from the wells before they could be got under control, and from the leakage and bursting of tanks. The peculiar odor of petroleum pervaded everything; the air for miles was fairly saturated with it; nothing else was thought of; nothing else was talked about. Land was sold at thousands of dollars per acre. Fortunes were made and lost in a day. Oil companies with high-sounding names were organized almost without number, absorbing millions of money; many companies were formed without the shadow of a basis for operations, and many persons who were as covetous as they were ignorant, were drawn into the maelstrom of speculative excitement and hopelessly ruined. No parallel in the history of speculation in this country can be found, excepting, perhaps, that which occurred during the 'California gold fever' of 1849."

The Pennsylvania oil region and the Russian oil region are the two greatest centers of petroleum in the world. The latter has its center at Baku, on the Caspian Sea. The following interesting state of affairs at Baku in 1872 is given by Major Marsh:

"The afternoon was devoted to the great natural wonders of Baku, petroleum and the everlasting fires. At Surakhani the whole country is saturated with petroleum; on making a hole in the ground the gas escapes, on lighting which it burns for a very long while, one of the few spots on earth where this phenomenon can be seen. When there is no wind the flame is dull and small, but in a gale it roars and leaps up eight or ten feet. There are two naphtha refining establishments at Surakhani, the furnaces of which are entirely heated by the natural gas, which is collected as it rises out of the ground in an iron tank and led off by pipes. At night the whole place is lighted in the same manner, by ordinary gas burners attached to the walls. On returning home in the evening we saw the silent waste, lit up by various fires, each surrounded by a group of wild Tartars cooking their food by its heat.

"We shall have occasion further on to furnish more particular information respecting the enormous yield of the wells around Baku, and therefore in this connection only incidentally allude to the statement of the geographer, who notices the 'seven hundred oil wells' which have all been drilled, none of which shows any signs of exhaustion, and says that 'immense loss is caused by the ignorance of those engaged in the trade. Thus a well at Balakhani, yielding 36,571 barrels of naphtha daily, ran waste for four weeks before reservoirs could be prepared to receive the oil.'"

A celebrated Russian scientist, after a visit to Baku in 1882, said: "Comparing results achieved in the two countries on one side and the average depth and total number of wells on the other, it may justly be stated that the natural petroleum wells of Baku, as far as our knowledge goes, have no parallel in the world."

The statement concerning the enormous yield from some of the wells of this district may well challenge our credulity. The following graphic description of the bursting forth of the great Droojba fountain is from an eyewitness and is given in the words of Mr. Charles Marvin: "In America there are over 25,000 petroleum wells; Baku possesses 400, but a single one of these 400 wells has thrown up as much oil in a day as nearly the whole of the 25,000 in America put together. This is very wonderful, but a more striking fact is that the copiousness of the well should have ruined its owners and broken the heart of the engineer who bored it after having yielded enough oil in four months to have realized in America at least one million sterling. In Pennsylvania that fountain would have made its owner's fortune. There is $50,000 worth of oil flowing out of the well every day. Here it has made the owner a bankrupt (on account of the damage done by the oil to surrounding property). These words were addressed to me by an American petroleum engineer as I stood alongside of the well that had burst the previous morning and out of which the oil was flowing twice as high as the Great Geyser in Iceland with a roar that could be heard several miles round. The fountain was a splendid spectacle and it was the largest ever known at Baku. When the first outburst took place the oil had knocked off the roof and part of the sides of the derrick, but there was a beam left at the top, against which the oil broke with a roar in its upward course and which served in a measure to check its velocity. The derrick itself was 70 feet high and the oil and the sand, after bursting through the roof and sides, flowed three times higher, forming a grayish-black fountain, the column clearly defined on the southern side, but merging into a cloud of spray thirty yards broad on the other. The strong southerly wind enabled us to approach within a few yards of the crater on the former side and to look down into the sandy basin from around about the bottom of the derrick, where the oil was bubbling and seething round the stalk of the oil-shoot like a geyser. The diameter of the tube up which the oil was rushing was 10 inches. On issuing from this the fountain formed a clearly defined stem about 18 inches thick and shot up to the top of the derrick, where, in striking against the beam, which was already half-worn through by friction, it got broadened out a little. Thus continuing its course more than 200 feet high, it curled over and fell in a dense cloud to the ground on the northern side, on a sand bank, over which the olive-colored oil ran in innumerable channels toward the lakes of petroleum that had been formed on the surface of the estate. Now and again the sand flowing up with the oil would obstruct the pipe or a stone would clog the course; then the column would sink for a few seconds lower than 200 feet, but rise directly afterward with a burst and a roar to 300 feet… Some idea of the mass of matter thrown up from the well could be formed by a glance at the damage done on the south side in twenty-four hours; a vast shoal of sand was formed, which buried to the roof some magazines and shops and blocked to the height of six or seven feet all the neighboring derricks within a distance of 50 yards… Standing on the top of the sand shoal we could see where the oil, after flowing through a score of channels from the ooze, formed in the distance or lower ground a whole series of oil lakes, some broad enough and deep enough in which to row a boat. Beyond this the oil could be seen flowing away in a broad channel toward the sea. This celebrated well, from the best estimates that could be made, gushed forth its oil treasure at the rate of 2,000,000 gallons a day from a depth of 574 feet."

About the year 1858 oil was discovered in Berksville, Tenn., on the Cumberland River. It was called rock oil and was hawked about the streets as a sure cure for rheumatism. About 1866 there was a company formed to develop the petroleum then so-called. The transportation from Berksville to market was so dear that the company was unsuccessful. At Glasgow, twelve miles from Cave City, Ky., near the Mammoth Cave, there was a well, and a transportation trough was suggested by Mr. Geo. Northrup, which was never used. But the suggestion finally led up to the subsequent use of pipe lines for transporting the oil. The first oil used was at the head-waters of the Cumberland River. It was sold in a crude state and was not then used for illuminating purposes. A few years afterwards, when it was discovered in Pennsylvania, it was so used, although still in a comparatively crude condition. The price of oil was then about thirty-five cents a gallon at retail, or to the consumer. It has since been sold to the consumer at as low a price as seven cents a gallon.

The Standard Oil Company owned the first pipe lines that transported oil from the Pennsylvania oil fields to the seacoast. It was then and still is the only company that has furnished the best oil product. The American oil is said to be at least twenty-five per cent. superior to the Russian article. It is of a higher grade and commands, naturally, a higher price.

It is assumed that there must still be great quantities of oil in the rock formation of the earth. The substance is absorbed by the rocks where deposited and does not evaporate, therefore it would long ago have disappeared by absorption were it not that there must be vast areas of it still lying ready to be pumped to the surface.

The odor of the petroleum first discovered was similar to that of the cheap bituminous coal. In this respect there has been a great improvement, although there is yet room for the removal of what, to many, is a very unpleasant odor.

In the fall of 1865 the narrator, Mr. George Northrup, at that time a young Chicago business man, still living in that city, believing that vast fortunes could be made in the oil regions, caught the fever, and ascertaining that new fields were being developed in Glasgow, Ky., went there with $5,000 capital, intending to invest it, fancying that amount would be sufficient to buy oil land and develop the same. Arriving at Cave City, on the L. & N. Railway, he was lucky enough to get a seat on the stage coach that ran to Glasgow. The only public inn was filled to overflowing, and he was obliged, with others, to sleep on the office floor of the hotel. Two miles before reaching the town the odor from the wells in operation affected him to such a degree that he confesses that no bouquet of flowers ever seemed to him sweeter. After dining at the hotel he was approached by a score of speculators who inquired of him whether he desired to invest in oil territory, which was held at from $25,000 to $200,000 an acre. He said that he would investigate the next day, became disgusted and immediately disappeared. The principal objection to the territory was the absolute absence of transportation. It was then that he suggested the use of a trough for the transportation of the oil to Glasgow, a distance of twelve miles, since which time it has been carried by pipe from the oil fields of Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean.