‘“ ‘Are ye shippin’ any oil these days?’ 
“ ‘Lots of it,” says I. 
* ‘How do you ship it?’ says he. 
* ‘In baskets,” I said. 
“ ‘Great Hivins! was his exclamation, as he walked off. 
“There was a great scarcity of barrels. Had to use old 
whisky barrels, old vinegar barrels, all kinds of barrels that 
could be got together. All sorts of devices were resorted to 
by way of tankage. Big pits were dug in the ground and 
lined around with planks. One of these, below Petroleum 
Center, covered about four acres. I don’t know how many 
thousands of barrels it would hold. 
“Qil was worth at first about $1.00 a gallon, or $40 a 
barrel, but it did not hold up to that.” Further questioning 
elicited the information that the production of the No. 2 
Drake well was about 24 barrels, and that of No. 8 about 
[2 barrels per day. 
While the Drake well was the first ever drilled for the 
production of petroleum, large quantities of oil in the aggre- 
gate had been produced from wells several hundred feet deep 
before Col. Drake was born. These wells had been sunk for 
salt water. The United States Census Report on the Pro- 
duction, Technology and Uses of Petroleum and Its Products, 
issued in 1885, contains an interesting account of the first 
salt well drilled west of the Alleghenies. It was located on 
the Great Kanawha, not far from Charleston, in what was 
then Virginia, but now West Virginia. Work upon it com- 
menced in 1806, by the Ruffner Bros. Other salt wells were 
later put down, and in nearly all of these salt wells, petroleum 
made its appearance, and was a source of considerable annoy- 
ance. In some of these wells as much as 25 to 50 barrels of 
oil a day came up with the brine, and was allowed to flow 
over the top of the salt cisterns into the river, where it spread 
over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent hues and 
strong odor, could be traced many miles down the stream. 
It was from this cause that the nickname “Old Greasy” was 
applied to the river by the Kanawha boatmen. 
This experience with salt water wells was duplicated at 
Tarentum, on the Allegheny river, a few miles above Pitts- 
burgh, where wells were drilled for brine from which to