PLAN OF THIS
OF THIS WORK.

THE growing demand for the species of practical information which it has been our object in the following pages to concentrate, has often suggested itself to the author, and doubtless to numberless others. Perhaps in no country have more frequent inquiries been made in relation to COAL; to its infinite varieties, adaptations and modifications; its innumerable depositories and its geographical distribution, than in the United States of Ame

rica.

This desire, probably, originates in the circumstance that in no country has such rapid progress been made in the development of mineral fuel, not only for all domestic purposes, but as a powerful agent in every department of manufacturing industry; notwithstanding that enormous and almost unbroken forests still overshadow the land. The increasing demand and corresponding supply, the rapid expansion of the field of industrial operations, have no doubt awakened this solicitude for information, local, general, statistical, commercial and scientific, on the subject of coal.

Acting under this impression the author has sought and gathered together the materials a great number at least, to remedy the deficiency of which we speak. His design, at the outset, was limited to the collection of such coal statistics as seemed sufficient for his private guidance. As in all labours of this description, the materials, during the progress of the undertaking, accumulated to an extent far greater than was anticipated. An extended arrangement led to greatly increased labour. The sources of information as regards foreign countries, being remote, its acquisition is necessarily uncertain and tedious: in fact it has no limit, for every day furnishes new facts to be registered. The process never ends, because the elements are inexhaustible. We are reminded, however, by the bulk of the matter on hand that we have reached a point at which we may consign the work to the press.

Preparing these pages in the United States, we are not unaware of the disadvantages which result from the want of access to many official European documents, and of reference to minor authorities such as rarely find their way into American libraries. We may, in some degree, counteract these deficiencies by communicating to European inquirers a great amount of information which our position has enabled us to acquire in America. These persons cannot but contemplate with interest the enormous extent of the

North American coal-fields, whose very existence, scarce a quarter of a century back, was unknown, even on their actual sites.

Of the surprising impulse to the interests of the New World which has been communicated by this recent knowledge, this newly acquired power; of the influence it has manifested in many of the commercial and on all of the industrial departments; of the moral consequences which are perceptible in a thousand forms, we shall hereafter submit abundant proofs. It will be much more difficult to speculate as to the position to which these combined elements of prosperity may conduct us in the next quarter or half century. We draw the most sanguine inferences with relation to the future, because the experience of the past twenty-five years fully justifies such flattering anticipations.

Something further yet remains to be said in relation to the objects contemplated in this volume, and of the several matters to which we have given a place therein. Our range would have been but narrow had we limited the investigation to mineral coal alone. It is well known that vast deposits of combustible substances have been denominated and described as coal, which the lights of science now show belong to a more recent class, and to a variety of geological ages or epochs. We refer to the brown coal or lignite class, so abundantly distributed.

In a large portion of Europe, such as the Austrian, Belgian, French and Prussian dominions, the distinction is perfectly well understood, and all official mining statistics are, in these countries, uniformly arranged under their appropriate classification. In many cases where errors have prevailed, we have been enabled to correct them by the aid of recent geological investigations. Still, modern science has not yet penetrated every where. There remains, at numerous, but rarely visited points, vast fields of so-called coal, whose true geological age we have yet to learn. For the present, therefore, we are unable to class these combustibles either with the true coals as the older series, or with the tertiary lignites as the newer, or with any intermediate deposits. This being the case, it was obviously inexpedient to exclude the LIGNITES from our pages, independently of their intrinsic value as combustibles. Brown coal is a valuable substitute for the older coal where there is a scarcity of the superior variety, as we shall have many opportunities of showing.

In like manner, while describing the lignites, PEAT seemed to demand a proportionate share of our attention, and to claim a place in our columns. The transition from one condition of these combustibles to another is oftentime so imperceptible that they seem to have almost equal claims on our notice. In its remarkable diffusion over the northern hemisphere where artificial heat is so indispensable, and where timber and other descriptions of fuel are so little abundant, turf or peat forms a substitute of inestimable worth. In its adaptation to numberless useful purposes, such as the manufacture of iron, the production of gas, &c., modern science has shown that it possesses qualities which heretofore were but little suspected. Thus, it will be seen, our list comprehends a large series of valuable products; extending upwards from carbonized peat at one extremity to hard coals and compact anthracities at the other.

*[Counting from 1823 to 1847, the date of the author's publication.-H.]

So closely do some bituminized coals approach to the mineral bitumens, some of which have even been denominated coal, as those in the West Indies and South America, that we have found it advisable to include the BITUMI

NOUS AND RESINOUS MINERALS.

We did not contemplate, in preparing this work, to enter extensively into the important topic of the statistics of IRON, but we have found it so interwoven with matters essential to our main subject, that a considerable mass of information has been necessarily incorporated in our pages, where will be found the latest estimates and returns of the amount of manufactured iron in all the principal producing countries, illustrated by a diagram of their respective proportions.

Explanatory tables of the current moneys, weights and measures of all the leading nations; a variety of statements of commercial facts; details of the respective tariffs, customs and international regulations, in relation to coal; the progress of railroads and canals; of steam power and navigation, and a vast series of analytical tables, besides the maps and diagrams, also occupy portions of the present volume. Among other duties, that of bringing to uniform denominations and a common standard the weights, measures and currency of so many nations, is by no means the lightest. The principal results in our tables have been calculated in the three standards of France, England, and the United States.

Where the range of inquiry is so wide, the number of documents which we have had to investigate is correspondingly large. We have endeavoured to designate our authority for every material fact which we have adopted. This recognition, we conceive, is not only in strict justice due to those authorities, but it bestows the sanction of their names, and the weight of their testimony to every page and paragraph of this volume.

Let us add further, that the practice is attended with a convenience which every inquirer can appreciate, the enumeration of standard authors and the direct reference to their pages. The whole series thus forms, in the aggregate, a copious catalogue of statistical and scientific authorities. The Index, we cannot but think, will be found to concentrate a vast mass of information which has heretofore been dispersed through hundreds of volumes in different languages, and constitutes of itself an epitome or condensation of the entire work.

It can scarcely be expected that in so new and extensive a country as the United States of America, any organized system is in effective operation for determining the amount of coal yearly raised there. In regard to anthracite, the great avenues from the mines to tide water admit of exact returns of the quantity annually transported, and means exist, in fact, of ascertaining, through the returns of the mining establishments, the true yearly production.

Not so with the production of bituminous coal in the interior. Of this we are wholly uninformed, and the area of the coal-fields is so large, that it seems futile to hazard even the roughest calculation. In 1840, an official attempt was made to acquire that information through the instrumentality of the Census Act, but it proved, as might be expected, a decided and acknowledged failure. In 1845, the Secretary of the Treasury, in conformity with the direction of the Senate, made a report of 419 pages, 6th

January, in relation to the statistics of the United States. From no county or state in the Union was a single return obtained as to the coal mines. During the same year, the Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing the inquiry, with reference to the settlement of the proposed tariff, issued circulars throughout all the states, asking information, among other statistics, as to the mines, their produce and prices. His report thereon of 957 pages, dated 3d December, 1845, elicited no useful result on this head, nor a single return relative to coal.

The wide distribution of property in America is unfavourable to the collection of such statistics. The process must, at all times, be unpopular, and the results extremely uncertain. This species of investigation savours. too much of scrutiny into the private concerns of men, and is unsuited to the spirit of republican institutions.

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.

WE take for granted that every one who may chance to peruse the summary of Statistics of mineral fuel which we have embodied in the present section, will be impressed with the immense importance of those substances, particularly as developed of late years; how vastly enlarged the area and bulk of their production in all countries; how essential they now are to the comfort of the human family; how much they have done towards the extension of the useful arts; how gloriously they have aided the progress of invention and improvement; how mighty are the results which have followed their increased application! For ourselves, we may remark, that during the investigation into the geographical distribution of coal and the subordinate combustibles, nothing has struck us more forcibly than the abundant supply with which Providence has furnished the inhabitants of our globe, particularly in its northern hemisphere. We were astonished at the almost numberless positions where mineral fuel is attainable; especially in North America and Europe. With very inadequate guides at the outset, we have brought together an enormous mass of geological and statistical details, which exhibit an amount and variety of fossil combustibles which far exceeded our original expectations. We have seen how recent is the knowledge. of the existence of immense regions occupied by coal, and that every year new positions, new deposits, become known to the traveller, or are demonstrated by the geologist. Through them, and the enterprise of the miner, a rich store of intelligence has been acquired, yet much remains behind. We are yet in the infancy of our knowledge as regards vast areas of country. Busy as the geologist has been during the last half century, how much is yet to be investigated; how wide the space yet untrodden; how ample the fields yet open to the scientific explorer!

The last quarter of a century has, more especially, been prolific in the discovery of the sites of useful mineral combustibles, and in the extended application of their products to the service of the commu