Sandy Valley, in the north-eastern section of the state, contributed its quota to the stock of Kentucky petroleum. From the first settlement of Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Johnson and Lawrence counties oil had been gathered for medical purposes by skimming it from the streams. About 1855 Cummings & Dixon collected a half-dozen barrels from Paint Creek and treated it at their coal-oil refinery in Cincinnati, with results similar to those attained by Kier in Pittsburg. They continued to collect oil from Paint Creek and Oil-Spring Fork until the war, at times saving a hundred barrels a month. In 1861 they drilled a well three-hundred feet on Mud Lick, a branch of Paint Creek, penetrating shale and sandstone and getting light shows of oil and gas. Surface-oil was found on the Big-Sandy River, from its source to its mouth, and in considerable quantities on Paint, Blaine, Abbott, Middle, John’s and Wolf Creeks. Large springs on Oil-Spring Fork, a feeder of Paint Creek, yielded a barrel a day. At the mouth of the Fork, in 1860, Lyon & Co. drilled a well two-hundred feet, tapping three veins of heavy oil and retiring from the scene when “the late unpleasantness” began to shake up the country. The same year a well was sunk one-hundred-and-seventy feet, on the headwaters of Licking River, near the Great Burning Spring. Gas and oil burst out for days, but the low price of crude and the impending conflict prevented further work. What an innumerable array of nice calculations this cruel war nipped in the bud! [Illustration: NORTH-EASTERN KENTUCKY.] J. Hinkley bored two-hundred feet in 1860, on Paint Creek, eight miles above Paintville, meeting a six-inch crevice of heavy-oil, for which there was no demand, and the capacity of the well was not tested. Salt-borers on a multitude of streams had much difficulty, fifty or sixty years ago, in getting rid of oil that persisted in coming to the surface. These old wells have been filled with dirt, although in some the oil works to the top and can be seen during the dry seasons. The Paint-Creek region had a severe attack of oil-fever in 1864-5. Hundreds of wells were drilled, boats were crowded, the hotels were thronged and the one subject of conversation was “oil—oil—oil!” Various causes, especially the extraordinary developments in Pennsylvania, compelled the plucky operators to abandon the district, notwithstanding encouraging symptoms of an important field. Indeed, so common was it to find petroleum in ten or fifteen counties of Kentucky that land-owners ran a serious risk in selling their farms before boring them full of holes, lest they should unawares part with prospective oil-territory at corn-fodder prices!