Lesley. ] ^9 [April. 



At Davis's, where the road crosses Paint Creek, just beloAV 

 the mouth of Little Glade Run, and in the midst of the finest 

 cliff scenery, — the Conglomerate being here 230 feet thick, 

 and the streams flowing at the bottom of it, between long 

 straight vertical walls,* — the black petroleum is perpetually 

 welling out, not only from under the Conglomerate, but from 

 crevices in the bare faces of the rocks, and accompanied, as 

 elsewhere, by yellow peroxide of iron. In the holes scooped 

 out of the sand and mucky banks of the run, the oil rises 

 visibly to the surface in clots, looking not unlike dead tad- 

 poles, which, slowly forming discs, widening and uniting with 

 each other, and covering the puddles Avith an iridescent coat- 

 ing, flow off" into the stream. The painted water is no curi- 

 osity, for we have been familiar with it as a guide to coal- 

 beds, and especially to the Sub-conglomerate ore-bed of No. 

 XI, these many years, although we never suspected its con- 

 nection with petroleum. But the clots of black petroleum 

 are very curious and characteristic. 



It is evident, from the description gi^en above, and the 

 same description will answer for a large number of similar 

 springs in the numerous gorges through which the Licking 

 waters find their way westward into the Blue Grass country 

 of Middle Kentucky, that the petroleum of the oil springs 

 of Paint Creek has had its home in the great Conglomerate 

 at the base of the coal-measures ; still has, we may say ; for 

 it is still issuing, in apparently undiminished quantities, from 

 the same. How it came to be originally packed away there ; 

 how long a time it has lain there ; how much of it has 

 managed to sink slowly down through the mass, and collect 

 itself as a layer at its bottom level, just over or in the ore 

 and coal-shales ; how much of it still remains disseminated 

 through the mass ; how recently the streams have succeeded 



* Some of the walled sides of the Little South Fork of Eed Kiver are 

 said to be impracticable for seven miles, where it is walled in, nearly 

 perpendicularly, to the height of 200 to 300 feet without a break. The 

 head of the Hotel branch of Graining Block Creek terminates abruptly 

 against a clilf 250 feet high, the chasm being about the same width. 

 S. S. Lyon's Keport, K. K. lY, p. 531; 229th mile Base Line Survey. 



