II.

DISCOVERY OF COAL.

SAVAGE THEORIES ABOUT COAL.—EXPERIENCE OF A SIBERIAN EXPLORING PARTY.—BURNING BLACK STONES.—MINERAL FUEL AMONG THE ANCIENTS.—THEIR MOTIVE POWER.—CHINESE TRADITIONS.—CHINESE GAS WELLS.—HISTORY OF COAL IN ENGLAND.—A ROYAL EDICT.—CURIOUS STORY OF THE MINER OF PLENEVAUX.—EXTENT OF COAL FIELDS THROUGHOUT THE GLOBE.—THE QUAKER AND THE YANKEE PEDLER.—THE FIRST ANTHRACITE.—BELLINGHAM BAY AND THE CHINOOKS.—HOW COAL WAS FORMED.—INTERVIEWING A REPTILE.—THEORIES OF THE ANCIENTS.—RIVERS OF OIL OF VITRIOL.—ANCIENT AND MODERN FIRE WORSHIPPERS.

In the autumn of 1865, a small party connected with the survey of a telegraph route through North-eastern Asia, was landed at the mouth of the Anadyr River, near Behring’s Straits. Another party was landed in Kamchatka, and proceeded over land towards the north. They made constant inquiries about the Anadyr party, and at last learned from a band of wandering aboriginals that some white men had been left by a fire ship (steamer) near the mouth of the river, and were living in a small house which they had constructed partly of boards, partly of bushes, and partly of earth. The savages described them as the most wonderful white men they had ever seen. “They have,” said one of the savages, “an iron box, and they burn black stones in it to make a fire.” These savages had never seen a stove, and they had never seen coal. To their untutored minds the work of the white men was something wonderful.

It is probable that the comparatively recent discovery of mineral coal is due in a great measure to its close resemblance to stone. A savage or civilized man knows that an ordinary stone, whether white, red, blue, green, or gray, will not burn; then why should he suppose that a black stonewill burn? Until a comparatively recent date there has been no great demand for coal as fuel. Many parts of the world at the present day are covered with immense forests, and for a hundred and perhaps thousands of years there will be no occasion in these localities to make use of the mineral fuel.

COAL AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

It is supposed that the Greeks and Romans had some knowledge of fossil fuel, but they made very little use of it, partly for the reason that they did not know the proper way to burn it, and partly because the forests in those days furnished all the fuel needed for industrial purposes. There were no manufactories and smelting establishments, and the working of metals was carried on in a very primitive way. Wood and charcoal were the only fuel, and most of the countries inhabited at that early day were favored with a warm climate, that for the most part of the year was comfortable enough by day, while blankets and other bed-clothing gave sufficient warmth by night. The laws of heat were not known; the pressure of vapor was not even thought of, or suspected; and mechanical force was derived from wind, from water, and from animated beings.

When the winds did not blow the galleys were rowed by convicts, and in the absence of a stream of water, animals, and sometimes men, turned the mill.

Occasionally in building aqueducts, large beds of coal were laid bare, but no attention was paid to them. In making one aqueduct, a branch of a canal was cut through a bed of rock, and at the bottom of that bed a valuable seam of coal was found, but nobody appears to have troubled his head about it. It is supposed by most writers that the discovery of coal occurred in the East. The Chinese have been credited with the discovery and invention of nearly everything in the world except the discovery of America and the invention of the electric telegraph. It is pretty certain that they were acquainted with mineral fuel from a very remote antiquity. They knew how to work it, and apply it to industrial uses, such as baking porcelain, drying tea, and the like. The Chinese, for hundreds of years, used to bake porcelain withmineral coal. It is only recently that mineral coal has been substituted for charcoal for this very same purpose in France, and it has been found to be quite economical.

CHINESE FIRE WELLS.

The Chinese knew how to collect the gases which came from coal, and they used them for illuminating. The accounts of the early missionaries state that from time immemorial the Chinese used to bore into the earth in search of gas, and when they found it they conveyed it in pipes to the places where it was wanted. Gas was not used for illuminating in Europe until quite recently.

Historians also say that for many centuries mines of coal have been worked in the Celestial Empire, but that the working was in a very barbarous fashion. Many of their coal mines consist of open cuttings; when they went underground they took but little care to construct drains or support the subterranean ways, and they took no precaution whatever against explosions of fire-damp, which often proved fatal. Their working of mines to-day is in the same barbarous fashion of centuries ago, and one might be pardoned for thinking, like the boy who was trying to learn the alphabet, that it was hardly worth while to go through so much to accomplish so little.

In England there are evidences to show that coal was known to the Romans, and possibly to the Britons before the Roman invasion; but it was only worked at the outcrops of the coal seams. No mention is made of coal until the time of Henry II. In 1259 a charter was granted to the Freemen of Newcastle, giving them the liberty “to dig for cole,” and a few years later coal was carried to London.

In 1306 Parliament petitioned the king to prevent the importation of coal, and Edward I. issued a proclamation forbidding the use of mineral fuel. Coal was worked to some extent in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century the English coal mines were in full operation. In 1615 four thousand English ships were employed in the coal trade. The coal mines of Belgium were opened about thesame time as those of England. The Belgian coal miners tell a curious story of the discovery of coal, in the twelfth century, at the village of Plenevaux, near Liège. One of the old chroniclers gives the account as follows:—

THE MINER OF PLENEVAUX.

“Houillos, a farrier, at Plenevaux, was so poor as not to be able to earn enough for his wants, not having sometimes bread enough to give to his wife and children. One day, being without work, he almost made up his mind to put an end to his life, when an old man, with a white beard, entered his shop. They entered into conversation. Houillos told him his troubles; that, being a disciple of St. Eloi, he worked in iron, blowing the bellows himself to save the expense of an assistant. He could easily realize some advantages if charcoal was not so dear, as it was that which ruined him.

“The good old man was moved even to tears. ‘My friend,’ said he to the farrier, ‘go to the neighboring mountain, dig up the ground, and you will find a black earth suitable for the forge.’

“No sooner said than done. Houillos went to the spot pointed out, found the earth as predicted, and having thrown it into the fire, proceeded to forge a horseshoe at one heating. Transported with joy, he would not keep the precious discovery to himself, but communicated it to his neighbors, and even to his brother farriers. A grateful posterity has bestowed his name to coal, which is called, in French,Houille.

“His memory is still cherished by all the miners of Liège, who frequently tell the story of the honest collier, or of the old coal miner, as they delight in calling him. The miners say it was an angel who showed him the spot where the coal was.”

It is not positively known when the first discovery of coal was made in the United States. Some historians say that it was before the Revolutionary war, while others say it was since that time. It is certain that coal mining has not been extensively prosecuted on the American continent until within the past fifty years.

IMPRESSIONS OF PLANTS FOUND IN COAL.

DISCOVERY OF ANTHRACITE COAL IN PENNSYLVANIA, IN 1768.—INTRODUCED AS FUEL FOR RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES IN 1836.

There is an old story told somewhere of a discovery of coal inPennsylvania by one of the Quaker settlers in the mountains, not far from where Scranton now stands. According to the story-teller,—but I cannot vouch for his correctness,—the Quaker settler, who was familiar with coal in England, discovered a peculiar stone, which seemed to him almost identical with the substance which he had used in England for fuel. He carried some of it home, and threw it in the fire. He found that it became red, and was consumed, but that it would only ignite when there was a very hot fire of wood around it. The coal with which he had been familiar would burn quite readily, and gave off a thick black smoke; but the substance which he had discovered gave neither smoke nor flame. He wondered at this, and concluded that the substance which he found was worthless.

THE QUAKER AND THE YANKEE.

One day a traveller, whom the story-teller converts into a Yankee pedler, came along. As they sat by the evening fire, the Quaker told him of the peculiar region they were in, and of the remarkable stones which he had discovered. He threw a few fragments upon the fire, and in a little while they became red and were consumed.

The traveller insisted that the substance was valuable; that it was probably good coal, but the great difficulty was to make it burn. After gossiping a while about the matter, the traveller went to bed.

During the night he pondered over the matter, and in the morning asked his Quaker friend to take him to the spot where he had found the black stone. The spot was shown him; he examined the substance carefully. The Quaker carried to the house a considerable quantity of the substance, and then the Yankee said,—

“I think we can make this stuff burn if we can only draw a fire through it. Now, what we want to do is to fix up something so as to make the fire go where we want it to.”

The Quaker assented to the proposition, and asked if it were possible.

The Yankee said, “Yes. I know how it can be done; but before I tell you I want to buy half of the land where you found that stone.”

A bargain was struck very speedily, and the Yankee hunted around the establishment, and found a piece of sheet iron, which he fashioned into a blower. He then built up a small, narrow fire-place, and fitted his blower to the front. “The next thing,” said he, “is to make something like a grate;” and they took some rods of iron and fashioned them into a rude grate.

“Now,” said the Yankee to the Quaker, “build a good fire of wood, so that it will fill the bottom of that grate.”

The Quaker followed the directions, and when the fire was well started, the Yankee threw a peck or so of the coal on the top and put up the blower. The fire was drawn directly among the fragments of coal; in a little while the blower was removed, and the coal was found to be a red, burning mass, which threw off an intense heat.

Both were delighted with the discovery; and thus was opened the first anthracite coal mine in America.

DISCOVERY AT BELLINGHAM BAY.

A story was once told to me, on the Pacific coast, concerning the discovery of coal at Bellingham Bay, in British Columbia. The narrator said that a party of men connected with the Hudson Bay Company’s service, was at one time in the camp of a family of Chinook Indians. The Indians told them that a few days before, in a locality which they had visited, they had attempted to build a fire. The wind was blowing, and in order to shield their fire they piled some stones around it. Among these were two or three large black stones, which they had picked up on the surface. Great was their astonishment, when the fire was under way, to see these black stones ignite and burn. They thought it something mysterious, and immediately ascribed it to the work of the devil, just as a great many savage and civilized people are inclined to attribute anything they do not understand to His Satanic Majesty. Next day they guided the white men to the spot. It was found that a vein of coal outcropped upon the surface, and gave sure indications of a rich deposit below.

ANNUAL COAL PRODUCT.

The annual production of coal throughout the entire worldis roughly estimated at about two hundred millions of tons. More than half of this coal is produced in Great Britain. About twenty millions of tons are mined in North America, and the rest mainly in Belgium, France, and Prussia. The production of other countries is comparatively insignificant. Coal is the most valuable mineral substance known. The amount of coal taken from the earth every year is double the value of all the gold, silver, and diamonds annually produced. In the great World’s Fair of London in 1851, when the famous Kohinoor diamond attracted thousands of curious spectators, there was one day a lump of coal placed near the case containing the Kohinoor. The lump bore this brief label: “This is therealKohinoor diamond.”

America to-day is of far less importance as a coal producer than Great Britain, but she is destined to become eventually the great coal producer of the world. At the present time there is much anxiety in England about the exhaustion in a few hundred years of the coal fields in the British Isles. The United Kingdom contains nine thousand square miles of coal fields; France, Belgium, Spain, Prussia, and other German states, together, about two thousand seven hundred square miles of coal fields; other countries, not including America, contain about twenty-nine thousand, while North America, including the British colonies, contains about one hundred and eighty thousand square miles of coal fields. It will thus be seen that the area of the North American coal fields is four times as great as all those of the other countries of the globe. Of this immense extent of coal deposits, a very small portion has yet been touched, and consequently for thousands of years to come our country can supply the world.

HOW COAL WAS FORMED.

Coal was formed at a very remote geological period. Scientific men differ as to the exact age of this substance. Their differences are trivial, however, being only a few millions of years; but they all agree that at the time coal was formed there were wide jungles and swamps that covered a large portion of the earth’s surface. The atmosphere was very moist, and probably contained a much larger proportion ofcarbonic acid than at the present time. This gas is one which especially promotes the growth of plants. It is, and was, probably unfavorable to the existence of animal life; and it has been suggested that the gradual withdrawal of the carbonic acid by the growth of vegetation of that period slowly purified the atmosphere, and brought it to the condition in which we now find it. The earth at that time was not fitted for the habitation of man. If man had existed at that period, he would have needed fins in the place of hands and feet, and would have required lungs like those of fishes, instead of those which he now possesses. There was an abundant population of reptiles and of insects, and there was a liberal supply of fishes.

Many of these fishes, reptiles, and insects are unknown at the present day. They performed their work, if work they had to do, and disappeared. Their remains are found in the coal seams and in the rocks which lie above or beneath the coal, and form an interesting subject of study.

Some of the reptiles were enormously large. Remains have been found of a lizard more than one hundred feet long, with an open countenance, that could have taken in an ordinary man about as easily as a chicken swallows a fly. The skeletons of these reptiles are found, and I think that most people who examine these skeletons are inclined to give a sigh of relief when they remember that such creatures are now extinct. They would be very disagreeable travelling companions, and one might be very much disinclined to meet them in a narrow lane on a dark night.

Some years ago I examined the skeleton of a reptile discovered in the Mississippi Valley, and though the bones were cold and motionless, I had the wish to keep at a respectful distance from them. He had a mouth that reminded one of the extension top of a patent carriage; and when his jaw was pushed back, it seemed to me that he could have walked down his own throat without the slightest difficulty.

CONVERSION OF PEAT TO COAL.

The most plausible and reasonable theory of the formation of coal seems to be that it is for the most part the remains of vegetable matter which had become decomposed and changedto mineral on the spot where it remained and is now found. The fibrous tissues of the aquatic vegetation flourished like a thick carpet on the moist surface. It became mingled and matted together, as we now find turf and peat in peat bogs, and in swamps and marshes. On the borders of great lakes, which in time were built up and became swamps, these plains extended, and underwent slow depression. Layers of sand and other substances were carried down below the level of the sea, which we now find among and alternating with the coal seams in the shape of beds of shales and sandstones. Then another system of lagoons formed above them, and allowed new jungles to spring up and new marshes to be formed. These were in turn depressed and covered by the waters. In this way, step by step, the coal beds were built up. According to geologists, each coal seam represents a depressed swamp, while the intervening strata of sandstone, and shale, and clay, mark the various sediments which were brought together by the action of the waters.

The coal beds contain many impressions of plants and portions of plants, so that geologists have been able to determine the nature of the vegetation of that period. There are a great many mosses and ferns, some of the latter having thick, broad stems, and long and heavy leaves. One geologist says there are one hundred and seventy-seven specimens of plants found in single coal beds. He says there are no palms, nor grasses, nor flowering plants; and for this reason he considers that the coal beds were formed from plants of a marshy growth.

The layers of peat, after being covered by shales, sandstone, and limestone, were compressed beneath the enormous weight of the over-lying strata, and while undergoing this compression, there was a sort of distillation and purifying process going on. In this way the plants and peat, originally loosely matted together, became more and more compressed, and by means of the heat and pressure were entirely decomposed. Ultimately the substance was turned into what we now find it, and the coal was stored up for future ages.

The ancients had curious theories in regard to the formationof coal. They regarded it as streams of bitumen, which had become petrified, or had impregnated certain very porous kinds of rock. Another theory which they entertained was, that forests had been carbonized on the spot where they grew, or had been transformed by streams of sulphurous acid, which possesses the property of hardening and carbonizing wood. It is easy to attribute the origin of coal to the agency of rivers of bitumen, and oil of vitriol; but it is not easy to say where those rivers came from.

SACRED FIRE WELLS.

The Chinese have a theory that coal is a species of plant of which the seed was deposited in the earth ages and ages ago, and that it grew and spread in different parts of the empire where it is now found, in order that the Chinese of to-day might have a sufficient supply of fuel. They attribute the streams of inflammable gas, which they collect and utilize, to the breathings of an immense monster below the surface of the earth, and in some localities they call him the first cousin of the God of Fire. The God of Fire is one of the Chinese deities. He occupies a prominent place in the temples, and is worshipped with great solemnity. In other parts of the world these streams of gas are worshipped, and in localities along the coast of the Caspian Sea, streams of burning gas are constantly rising, and their sources are known as sacred wells. They are visited by thousands of devotees every year, and are regarded with the greatest reverence.

Wells of similar character exist in the United States, but they are mostly of artificial origin. They are found in the vicinity of Oil Creek, and that region of Western Pennsylvania which has been baptized as Petrolia. Thousands of devotees have worshipped in the vicinity of these wells, and many of them owe their fortunes to the modern God of Fire; but it is doubtful if many of them worship the wells with that religious devotion and reverence which are found among the fire worshippers of the far east.

A WIRE TRAMWAY.

A novelty in the way of carrying coal may be seen at the Harewood coal mine, at Nanaimo, British Columbia. The mines are situated at a considerable elevation above the sea-level, andthe intermediate ground is covered with trees and rocks, while several deep ravines intercept the grounds. Under such circumstances, the construction of a railway would be costly and require much time, as several viaducts would be required, and the road at some places would have to make considerable curves. The proprietor of the mines therefore decided to avoid all these difficulties, on putting up a wire tramway in a direct line from the mine to the port, by means of which the ravines could be spanned without expense, and the timber on the ground could be converted into the necessary posts.

There are in all ninety-seven posts, put up to such a height that the wire spanned over them forms a softly inclining plane. The distance between them is from 150 to 250 feet. The wire rope is of the best crucible steel, specially made for the purpose, and is 6-1/2 miles in length; each post having a pair of groove-pulleys two feet in diameter, over which the wire moves. The rope is driven at the lower end by an engine of 20 horse-power, which is sufficient to drive the line when carrying 12 tons per hour.

The driving machinery is fitted with drums 10 feet in diameter; at the mine the rope simply passes round a 10-foot drum. Two hundred and fifty iron buckets, each with a capacity of 2 cwt. of coal, are fitted with a patent hanger and box-head, by means of which all jolting, when passing over the supports, is avoided. This tramway has been transporting, during eight months, about 120 tons of coal per day, and no accident or stoppage has occurred.

WIRE RAILWAY AT THE HARWOOD COAL MINES, BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Many other tramways of the same nature have been recently put in operation in various parts of the world, as, for instance, in Mauritius, where they have been successfully applied to the carriage of sugar-cane; also in New Zealand, where they are used for carrying manganese ore.

ESTIMATE OF COAL.

This means of conveyance is certainly a very practical and inexpensive one; it does away with railroad material, engines, engineers, the consumption of coal, etc., and may be applied over the deepest ravines, where it would almost be an impossibility to build a railroad, unless a bridge were built, at enormousexpense and labor. Let us conclude this article by giving the following estimate, in round numbers, of the world’s present annual production of coal. It is taken from various sources, and may be considered approximately correct.

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