14 University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
more tree, sunk into the quicksands, suggested the idea of 
wooden casing and the wisdom of boring a little way from the 
spring. A piece of oak, bored from end to end as log pumps 
used to be, was set in the hole. The ingenious brothers devised 
a chisel-like drill to pierce the rock, fastened it to a rope fixed 
to a spring-pole, and bounced the tool briskly. To shut out. 
the weak brine above from the strong brine beneath, they put 
in tin tubing, around which they tied a leather bag filled with 
flaxseed. Thus, three generations ago, Joseph and David Ruff- 
ner, aided later by William Morris and his invention of ‘jars’ in 
drilling-tools, stumbled upon the basis of casing, seed-bagging 
and boring oil-wells. All honor to the memory of these worthy 
pioneers, groping in the dark to clear the road for the great 
petroleum boom. Doctor Hale continues: 
“Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or 
less petroleum, and some of the deeper wells a considerable 
flow. Many persons now think, trusting to their recollections, 
that some of the wells afforded as much as twenty-five to fifty 
barrels per day. This was allowed to flow over from the top 
of the salt-cisterns to the river; where, from its specific gravity, 
it spread over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent 
hues and not very savory odor could be traced for many miles 
down the stream. It was from this that the river recsived the 
nickname of “Old Greasy,” by which it was long known by 
Kanawha boatmen and others.’ ” 
Drilling for salt-wells was by no means confined to Pennsyl- 
vania and West Virginia. To the west, in Ohio, the same kind 
of enterprises were engaged in, with results similar to those 
obtained in Pennsylvania. Quoting again from McLaurin: 
“On an old map of the United States, printed in England in 
1787, the word ‘petroleum’ is marked twice, indicating that the 
‘surface-shows’ of oil had attracted the notice of the earliest 
explorers of southern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania a. 
century ago. In one instance it is placed at the mouth of the 
stream since famed the world over as Oil creek, where Oil City 
is situated; in the other, on a stream represented as emptying 
into the Ohio river, close to the site of what is now the village 
of Macksburg. When that section of Ohio was first settled, 
various symptoms of greasiness were detected, thin films of 
oil floating on the waters of Duck pond and its tributaries, 
globules rising in different springs, and seeping occurring fre- 
quently in the same manner as in Pennsylvania and West 
Virginia. Thirty miles north of Marietta, on Duck creek, a 
salt-well sunk by Mr. McKee, in 1814, to the depth of 475 feet, 
discharged ‘periodically, at intervals of from two to four days 
and from three to six hours’ duration, thirty to sixty gallons 
of petroleum at each inception.’ Kighteen years afterwards 
the discharges were less frequent and the yield of oil dimin- 
