The salt was sent down the Tombigbee to Mobile or conveyed in wagons into the interior of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These wagons were so numerous that for miles from the various works it was difficult to cross the road. The whole place had the appearance of a manufacturing city. These works had been in operation to some extent since 1809. The wells were exhausted from 1865 to 1870, when they began flowing again. Besides the smaller works and large private works there were hundreds of smaller establishments. When salt was needed on a plantation in the Black Belt, the overseer would take hands, with pots and kettles, and go to the salt wells, camp out for several weeks, and make enough salt for the year's supply. All private makers had to give a certain amount to the state.[395] People from the interior of the state and from southeast Alabama went to the Florida coast and made salt by boiling the sea water. The state had salt works at Saltville, Virginia, but found it difficult to get transportation for the product. Salt was given to the poor people by the state, or sold to them at a moderate price. The legislature authorized the governor to take possession of all salt when necessary for public use, paying the owners a just compensation; $150,000 was appropriated for this purpose in 1861, and in 1862 it was made a penal offence to send salt out of the state.[396] A Salt Commission was appointed to look after the salt works owned by the state in Louisiana. A private salt maker in Clarke County made a contract to deliver two-fifths of his product to the state at the cost of manufacture, and the state purchased some salt from the Louisiana saltbeds.[397] As salt became scarcer the people took the brine in old pork and beef barrels and boiled it down. The soil under old smoke-houses was dug up, put in hoppers, and bleached like ashes, and the brine boiled down and dried in the sunshine.[398] At Bon Secour Bay, near Mobile, there were salt works consisting of fifteen houses, capable of making seventy-five bushels per day from the sea-water. In 1864 these were burned by the Federals, who often destroyed the salt works along the Florida coast.[399] At Saltmarsh, ten miles west of Selma, there were works which furnished much of the salt used in Mississippi, central Alabama, and east Georgia during the years 1862, 1863, and 1864. Wells were dug to the depth of twelve or fifteen feet, when salt water was struck. The wells were then curbed, furnaces of lime rock were built, and upon them large kettles were placed. The water was pumped from the wells and run into the kettles through troughs, then boiled down, and the moisture evaporated by the sun. The fires were kept up day and night. A large number of blacks and whites were employed at these wells, and, as salt makers were exempt from military duty, the work was quite popular.[400]