EASY ACCESS то ITS COAL.

683

of points by simply scraping off the surface soil, so that, as far as the mere getting of coal is concerned, two thousand dollars will open a mine ready to ship one thousand tons per week. There is no region in the world where less physical labor will prepare a mine for the delivery of coal at the drift's mouth.

"This will be made clearer by a comparison of the position of coal here and in Great Britain in this respect. In Great Britain, and in fact in almost all of the European coal-fields, the coal is deep below the water-level. To reach the seams requires the expenditure of years of labor and vast sums of money in sinking shafts or pits, and in erecting pumping and hoisting machinery, to be maintained and renewed at heavy annual expense. It is authoritatively stated that the cost of sinking shafts in the Newcastle region of England to the depth of one thousand feet, has been, in many instances, one thousand dollars per yard. In the great Northern coal-field of Great Britain, producing twenty million tons per annum, there are two hundred pits or shafts, costing, in first outlay,

for sinking and machinery, fifty millions of dollars, to which must be added the necessary expense of constructing and maintaining proper air-courses, and their accessories requisite to the safety of the employés.

"Now in this great Kanawha coal-field nature has already sunk all the necessary pits and shafts, which need neither repair, renewal, nor labor to work them. The laws of gravity have provided the most perfect, permanent, and costless pumping machinery; and the ventilation of the mine and safety of the employés, instead of requiring scientific knowledge and anxious thought, is simply a matter of the most ordinary care, the freedom from noxious gases being the natural result of the position of the coal strata."

There is coal enough along the line of the railroads and rivers in this favored section to supply the American market for several centuries. Professor Ansted, of England, explored this region nearly a quarter of a century ago, and gave his testimony at a meeting of the Society of Arts in London, two or three years since, that "there was no coal-field more important than that of Virginia ;

684

TESTIMONY OF PROFESSOR

HOTCHKISS.

none where the coal-seams were more accessible or of a better quality. The coal-fields in the Appalachian range were nearly all horizontal, intersected by convenient valleys, could be worked from numerous points at the same time with ease, and might be looked upon as inexhaustible."

Professor Hotchkiss, of Staunton, Virginia, in a paper on the Resources of the State, speaks as follows of the Kanawha coal-field :

'On the eastern border the seams of the lower coal-measures are found, having an exposed aggregate thickness of some fifty feet in the gorge of New river—the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio railway—a cañon from 1,200 to 1,500 feet below the general level of the country. One of these seams is over six feet thick, furnishing a good coking coal; another seam of block coal is four and a-half feet thick. There are several other seams three and four feet in thickness, furnishing bituminous coals of good quality. These seams have only a moderate inclination to the north-west, and are all above the river and railroad-level. These lower measures descend more rapidly than the rivers, and so pass beneath the water-level some fifty miles from their eastern

ARRANGEMENT

AND

THICKNESS

OF STRATA.

685

outcrop. The strata of the upper coals come to the horizon as the mouth of New river is approached, and not far below the junction of that river with the Gauley to form the Great Kanawha. At Armstrong's creek, a section in the 600 feet of bluff above the level of the Kanawha shows thirteen seams of coal varying in thickness from two and a-half to nine feet, with an aggregate of sixty-one feet. Below this place, at Cannelton, on the other side of the Kanawha, there are five seams of coal open, in the 1,300 feet of the face of the bluff, aggregating twenty-nine feet. More than 100 feet of stratified coal has been proved here. The seams vary from eight to fourteen feet in thickness, and embrace gas, shop, splint, and cannel varieties. The seam producing the cannel is double, giving four feet of cannel and two and a-half of splint coal. This cannel will yield sixty gallons of oil to the ton of 2,000 lbs. A section on Cabin creek and

vicinity, ten miles below Cannelton, by Prof. Ansted, gives sixty-eight feet of coal, in some thirteen seams, varying from two and a-half to eleven feet; twenty-two feet of these seams are cannel and from seven to eleven splint coal. At Campbell's creek, still lower down the river, in the 400 feet of bluff, are six seams, from four and a-half to six feet thick, that furnish twentynine feet of coal. This coal is peculiar in its formation. Near Clay Court-House, on Elk river, the coal strata are from four and a-half to eleven feet thick, making forty-one feet of coal in the 500 feet of bluff; nineteen feet of the coal being splint and six cannel. At the mouth of Coal river a stratum of coal, from four to eight feet thick, is found at a depth of 300 feet; of course the other seams are found there also, but at greater depths. These may be considered fair samples of the sections throughout this great coal-field, ample enough to satisfy the wants of untold generations, and so accessible as to require no special skill in mining; nor expenditure for

686

MINERAL WEALTH OF THE BLUE

RIDGE.

drainage and ventilation. The Baltimore and Ohio railway, with its Parkersburg and Wheeling arms and numerous branches, now crosses the northern part of this field and opens it to markets. The Chesapeake and Ohio railway has just crossed it in the south, where the Great Miner has 'torn asunder the mountains,' and well and wisely cut an open gangway, more than a thousand feet deep, across the rich strata, exposed them to daylight, and at the same time made way for the railroad, at very low grades, to carry this 'bottled sunshine' to the great markets. The coals found here are used in making iron without coking, and the choice for any special purpose is very great, the quality being unexceptionally good."

Cannelton, mentioned by Professor Hotchkiss, was established by a Rhode Island company, who built works there for the milling of coal into oil. Just as the work was progressing fairly, the oil region of Pennsylvania was dis

covered, and the proprietors of Cannelton, unable to compete with the flowing wells of Titusville, closed their works, for without transportation facilities their coal was worthless. But with the advent of the railroad came a fortune into their hands, and to-day they let coal down an inclined plane 1,100 feet long from the almost perpendicular side of the mountain, directly into cars waiting on side tracks to receive it.

In previous chapters I have given some idea of the extent of the stores of iron in South-western Virginia and the Piedmont country. The deposits of iron ore are no less remarkable along the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio road. In that part of Piedmont penetrated by this line, there are hematite and magnetic ores of the best quality. In the spurs of the Blue Ridge, near Fisherville, a seam of hematite ores exists, and rich lodes of hematite and specular ores are found running along the foot of the Blue Ridge; at intervals, in the whole breadth of the Shenandoah valley; "and in continuous seams of great thickness along the north and parallel mountains beyond.”

The Inclined Plane at Cannelton.

"The mineral wealth of the Blue Ridge," says Professor Hotchkiss, “is great, and destined to be quite important, from its nearness to the sea-board. In the ranges of foot-hills lying along the western base of these mountains, the whole three hundred or more miles of their length, are found very extensive deposits of brown hematite iron ores of the best character, giving from sixty to seventyfive per cent. of metallic iron in the yield of the furnace. It is not correct to say that these deposits are continuous, and yet they have been so regularly found, when sought after, as almost to justify the use of that term. In some places they

FURNACES-ORE-POCKETS-LIMESTONE.

687

are deeply buried in the debris of the mountain; at others they show themselves as interstratified masses, conforming for long distances to the formations of the district, as near where New river leaves the Ridge, at Radford Furnace, where the stratum is over thirty feet in thickness, while at other places the ore, in a soft state, forms hill-like masses, as at the Shenandoah Iron Works, in Rockingham. At one place in Rockbridge, where the stratification is nearly vertical, striking with the mountain, this one appears as a hard central stratum, forming the crest of a spur more than 600 feet above its base. The western flank of the tableland in the south-west is known as the Iron mountain, from the quantity of this ore there exposed. There are numerous furnaces now in blast, and others are being built along the line of these deposits, making charcoal iron of a high character, such as now readily commands sixty dollars a ton in the United States. One of these had a yield of sixty-five per cent. of iron from the ore put into the furnace in the run of a season. Between these hematites and the main ridge is found a deposit of specular

Fern Spring Branch, a West Virginia Mountain Stream.

iron-stone."

In the slopes of the North mountain there are numerous lodes or pockets of ore interstratified with limestone. The ore-beds in the western portion of Augusta county, and in one or two adjacent counties in Virginia proper, are very extensive. Their astonishing bulk and their convenient position near the surface have prompted trustworthy experts to declare them among the most remarkable on the continent. From Gordonsville in the Piedmont district, to Huntington on the Ohio river, a distance of three hundred and twenty-five miles by the railway line, there is a constant succession of minerals. All the elements of successful and profitable coal mining and manufacture are there found closely associated. The iron ores are

rich and of great variety; the carboniferous limestone is excellent for fluxing purposes, and there are inexhaustible stores of coal. In Greenbrier valley the limestone is bordered by deposits of ore on one side, by coal-measures on the other.* * See appendix for article on the Iron of the Virginias.