to leadership owing to his
grandfather. There is but one rule among Americans--the tools to those
who can use them.

To-day Oil Creek is a town of many thousand inhabitants, as is also
Titusville at the other end of the creek. The district which began by
furnishing a few barrels of oil every season, gathered with blankets
from the surface of the creek by the Seneca Indians, has now several
towns and refineries, with millions of dollars of capital. In those
early days all the arrangements were of the crudest character. When
the oil was obtained it was run into flat-bottomed boats which leaked
badly. Water ran into the boats and the oil overflowed into the river.
The creek was dammed at various places, and upon a stipulated day and
hour the dams were opened and upon the flood the oil boats floated to
the Allegheny River, and thence to Pittsburgh.

In this way not only the creek, but the Allegheny River, became
literally covered with oil. The loss involved in transportation to
Pittsburgh was estimated at fully a third of the total quantity, and
before the oil boats started it is safe to say that another third was
lost by leakage. The oil gathered by the Indians in the early days was
bottled in Pittsburgh and sold at high prices as medicine--a dollar
for a small vial. It had general reputation as a sure cure for
rheumatic tendencies. As it became plentiful and cheap its virtues
vanished. What fools we mortals be!

The most celebrated wells were upon the Storey farm. Upon these we
obtained an option of purchase for forty thousand dollars. We bought
them. Mr. Coleman, ever ready at suggestion, proposed to make a lake
of oil by excavating a pool sufficient to hold a hundred thousand
barrels (the waste to be made good every day by running streams of oil
into it), and to hold it for the not far distant day when, as we then
expected, the oil supply would cease. This was promptly acted upon,
but after losing many thousands of barrels waiting for the expected
day (which has not yet arrived) we abandoned the reserve. Coleman
predicted that when the supply stopped, oil would bring ten dollars a
barrel and therefore we would have a million dollars worth in the
lake. We did not think then of Nature's storehouse below which still
keeps on yielding many thousands of barrels per day without apparent
exhaustion.

This forty-thousand-dollar investment proved for us the best of all so
far. The revenues from it came at the most opportune