The Story of a Piece of Coal: What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes

by Edward A. Martin

On the continent of Europe the coal-fields, though not occupying so large a proportion of the surface of the country as in England, are very far from being slight or to be disregarded. The extent of forest-lands still remaining in Germany and Austria are sufficing for the immediate needs of the districts where some of the best seams occur. It is only where there is a dearth of handy fuel, ready to be had, perhaps, by the simple felling of a few trees, that man commences to dig into the earth for his fuel. But although on the continent not yet occupying so prominent a position in public estimation as do coal-fields in Great Britain, those of the former have one conspicuous characteristic, viz., the great thickness of some of the individual seams.

In the coal-field of Midlothian the seams of coal vary from 2 feet to 5 feet in thickness. One of them is known as the "great seam," and in spite of its name attains a thickness only of from 8 to 10 feet thick. There are altogether about thirty seams of coal. When, however, we pass to the continent, we find many instances, such as that of the coal-field of Central France, in which the seams attain vast thicknesses, many of them actually reaching 40 and 60 feet, and sometimes even 80 feet. One of the seams in the district of St. Etienne varies from 30 to 70 feet thick, whilst the fifteen to eighteen workable seams give a thickness of 112 feet, although the total area of the field is not great. Again, in the remarkable basin of the Saône-et-Loire, although there are but ten beds of coal, two of them run from 30 to 60 feet each, whilst at Creusot the main seam actually runs locally to a thickness varying between 40 and 130 feet.

The Belgian coal-field stretches in the form of a narrow strip from 7 to 9 miles wide by about 100 miles long, and is divided into three principal basins. In that stretching from Liége to Verviers there are eighty-three seams of coal, none of which are less than 3 feet thick. In the basin of the Sambre, stretching from Namur to Charleroi, there are seventy-three seams which are workable, whilst in that between Mons and Thulin there are no less than one hundred and fifty-seven seams. The measures here are so folded in zigzag fashion, that in boring in the neighbourhood of Mons to a depth of 350 yards vertical, a single seam was passed through no less than six times.

Germany, on the west side of the Rhine, is exceptionally fortunate in the possession of the famous Pfalz-Saarbrücken coal-field, measuring about 60 miles long by 20 miles wide, and covering about 175 square miles. Much of the coal which lies deep in these coal-measures will always remain unattainable, owing to the enormous thickness of the strata, but a careful computation made of the coal which can be worked, gives an estimate of no less than 2750 millions of tons. There is a grand total of two hundred and forty-four seams, although about half of them are unworkable.

Beside other smaller coal-producing areas in Germany, the coal-fields of Silesia in the southeastern corner of Prussia are a possession unrivalled both on account of their extent and thickness. It is stated that there exist 333 feet of coal, all the seams of which exceed 2-1/2 feet, and that in the aggregate there is here, within a workable depth, the scarcely conceivable quantity of 50,000 million tons of coal.

The coal-field of Upper Silesia, occupying an area about 20 miles long by 15 miles broad, is estimated to contain some 10,000 feet of strata, with 333 feet of good coal. This is about three times the thickness contained in the South Wales coal-field, in a similar thickness of coal-measures. There are single seams up to 60 feet thick, but much of the coal is covered by more recent rocks of New Red and Cretaceous age. In Lower Silesia there are numerous seams 3-1/2 feet to 5 feet thick, but owing to their liability to change in character even in the same seam, their value is inferior to the coals of Upper Silesia.

When British supplies are at length exhausted, we may anticipate that some of the earliest coals to be imported, should coal then be needed, will reach Britain from the upper waters of the Oder.

The coal-field of Westphalia has lately come into prominence in connection with the search which has been made for coal in Kent and Surrey, the strata which are mined at Dortmund being thought to be continuous from the Bristol coal-field. Borings have been made through the chalk of the district north of the Westphalian coal-field, and these have shown the existence of further coal-measures. The coal-field extends between Essen and Dortmund a distance of 30 miles east and west, and exhibits a series of about one hundred and thirty seams, with an aggregate of 300 feet of coal.

It is estimated that this coal-field alone contains no less than 39,200 millions of tons of coal.

Russia possesses supplies of coal whose influence has scarcely yet been felt, owing to the sparseness of the population and the abundance of forest. Carboniferous rocks abut against the flanks of the Ural Mountains, along the sides of which they extend for a length of about a thousand miles, with inter-stratifications of coal. Their actual contents have not yet been gauged, but there is every reason to believe that those coal-beds which have been seen are but samples of many others which will, when properly worked, satisfy the needs of a much larger population than the country now possesses.