If I may hazard a further illustration of the internal boring
machinery of the well, let the reader link loosely together the thumbs
and forefingers of his two hands, then bring his forearms into a
straight line. Conceiving this line to be a perpendicular one, the
point of one elbow would represent the drill blade, the adjacent
forearm and hand the stem, the linked finger the jars, and the other
hand and forearm the sinker bar, with the derrick cord attached at a
point represented by the second elbow. By remembering the immense and
concentrated weight of the upright drill and stem, the tremendous
force of even a short fall may be conceived. The drill will bore many
feet in a single day through solid rock, and a few hours sometimes
suffices to force it fifty feet through dirt or gravel. When the
debris accumulates too thickly around the drill, the latter is drawn
up rapidly. The debris has previously been reduced to mud by keeping
the drill surrounded by water. A sand pump, not unlike an ordinary
syringe, is then let down, the mud sucked up, lifted, and then the
drill sent down to begin its pounding anew. Great deftness and
experience are needed to work the drill without breaking the jars or
connected machinery, and, in case of accident, there are grapples,
hooks, knives, and other devices without number, to be used in
recovering lost drills, cutting the rope, and other emergencies, the
briefest explanation of which would exceed the limits of this letter.

The exciting moment in boring a well is when a drill is penetrating
the upper covering of sand rock which overlies the oil. The force with
which the compressed gas and petroleum rushes upward almost surpasses
belief. Drill, jars, and sinker bar are sometimes shot out along with
debris, oil, and hissing gas. Sometimes this gas and oil take fire,
and last summer one of the wells thus ignited burned so fiercely that
a number of days elapsed before the flames could be extinguished. More