The first American salt well of which there is any official record was begun in 1806 and completed in January, 1808, on the Great Kanawha River in what is now West Virginia. Charlestown, Va., was then the nearest town, and in the vicinity of this brine well the first burning gas spring had been discovered in 1773. At Tarentum, on the Allegheny River, Pennsylvania, salt wells were started in 1810 which also yielded petroleum in considerable quantities, and such pioneers as Col. Ferris and Samuel M. Kier endeavoured later to turn this by-product to commercial account. The first flowing oil well was drilled unintentionally in 1818 at the mouth of Troublesome Creek, on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, twenty-eight miles south-east of Monticello, Va., by one Martin Beatty, who was seeking brine. “The Devil’s Tar” as he called it, was allowed to flow into the Cumberland River and covered its surface for a distance of thirty-five miles. The oil became ignited and an enormous conflagration ensued, which destroyed trees along the banks of the river, and also the salt works. What would to-day be regarded as a piece of stupendous good fortune was then accounted a disaster; though this particular well later supplied the chief ingredient for “American Medical Oil” a remunerative compound bottled at Burkeville, Kentucky. The most enterprising man in utilizing this unwelcome by-product of his salt wells was Samuel M. Kier. Originally a chemist and druggist, he resolved in the later forties to ascertain its uses both as a medicine and as an illuminant. Experiments at distillation to secure a burning fluid for lighting purposes were a success, and his product attained some vogue in rivalry to a kerosene which was being extracted from oil shales in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. But Mr. Kier’s chief business was that of the sale of petroleum for medicinal purposes--a compound he named “Kier’s Rock Oil.” He advertised it by imitations of an American greenback, which bore a vignette showing the plant at Tarentum with the derricks used in boring and pumping the brine wells--for it must be remembered that Kier was primarily a salt merchant who treated petroleum as a side-issue.