The coal formation in Scotland has been already traced as occupying the great central valley of the Lowlands, which separates the primitive crystalline and feldspathic rocks of the north from the silurian series of the southern border, and traversing the mainland from sea to sea. The middle and northern coal basins of England have an average uninterrupted stretch of about two hundred miles in length, by forty in breadth. The Bristol and Welsh coal-fields, are also very extensive. That of South Wales forms an immense double trough, comprised within a great oval elongated tract, betwixt St. Bride’s Bay, and Pontypool, with an anticlinal axis ranging east and west, and embracing an area of one thousand and fifty-five square miles. This is the largest coal-field in Britain, in which there are sixty-four seams of coal, of all qualities, from the highest bituminous to the purest anthracite, and having an aggregate thickness of one hundred and ninety-feet. In Ireland the coal basins are comparatively small, and isolated from one another: the principal workable seams are in the counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Cork, Tyrone, and the northern extremity of Roscommon.
The coal metals immediately present themselves on the French coast at Boulogne, more inland at Mons, and in the central district at St. Etienne, betwixt the valleys of the Loire and Rhone. This last basin is of small extent, but possesses great geological interest from its position among the primary and metamorphic rocks, and the materials of which the series is composed. The metals are inclosed in a long narrow trough, of about twenty-five miles by less than a mile at its greatest breadth. Granite, gneiss, mica-slate, underlie them throughout: instead of shales, and sandstones of the usual kind, the coals are imbedded in micaceous grit, and the detrital alluvia of the crystalline rocks. It has been described as a self contained repository, with its own furnishings and equipments all, as it were, self-originating: the vegetable matter is of native growth, the trees are still vertical, and in one part of the field present the appearance of a suddenly petrified forest; the iron, too, is native, and seems to have been actually smelted on the spot, by subterranean self-combustion. The coal, underlying one of the bands of ironstone, has undergone fusion, and been changed into coke; while sulphur and crystals of sulphate of lime have been separated in the crucible by the process of sublimation, as if to complete this scene of marvels.
In the low countries, at Namur and Liege, and other places along the banks of the Meuse—in Germany, Silesia, Moravia, Poland, the Carpathian Mountains—on the banks of the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Don, the coal-measures are found to occupy tracts of greater or lesser extent. These are sometimes accompanied with the usual alternating series entire and unbroken, sometimes with the absence of one or more members. In Russia the metals are imbedded in the middle mountain limestone series in one field, while in another district they are situated in the lower part of the series, or beneath the calcareous deposit, as in the thin beds of Fifeshire. The Liege coal-basin is of a remarkably complex structure—the metals lying in small hollows of contorted strata, which are bent and twisted like a sapling—elevated into every varying position and degree of inclination—and thus, by obtaining cross or horizontal sections, you pass repeatedly over the edges of the same beds. An enterprising Scotchman has long been lessee of one of these coal-fields, out of whose iron bands he has molded cannon and ball for every nation in Europe; and whose locomotives, forged from the same strata, now ply in pleasure excursions along every railway of the Netherlands and vine-clad banks of the Rhine and Moselle.
The American coal-fields, like its interminable forests, endless rivers, and everything in that vast continent, are all on the gigantic scale. The basin of the Mississippi, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies, forms an area equal to two-thirds of the states of Europe, almost every part of which is covered with the carboniferous limestone, supporting the coal metals and the newer palæozoic rocks. The great coal-field of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio, extends, according to Sir Charles Lyell, continuously from north-east to south-west for a distance of 207 miles, its breadth being in some places 180 miles. The basin of Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, is not much inferior in dimensions to the whole of England, while another coal deposit, 170 by 100 miles, lies farther to the north, between lakes Michigan and Huron. Mr. Logan, in his report on the geology of Canada, states that the coal-measures occupy nearly the whole of New Brunswick, a great part of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton island, and the south-west district of Newfoundland. And in the most remote northern regions, along the shores of the frozen sea, and the various rivers and their tributaries which fall into it, the carboniferous rocks with their inclosed beds of coal, some of considerable thickness, are found to prevail. A single seam, of an average thickness of ten feet, occurs in Pennsylvania, in the district of Pittsburgh, covering a superficial extent of about 14,000 square miles; which shows how inexhaustible the resources, and how limitless the means, of social advancement, of progress in the arts and sciences, garnered up for the generations to come in that mighty continent.
Upon the authority of Sir Charles Lyell we learn, that all the floral fossil phenomena are substantially the same as in Europe—a great preponderance of stigmariæ, ferns, lepidodendra, and calamites—some consisting of trees in an erect position, and of broken trunks, with their rootlets attached, and extending in all directions; and the same grits or sandstones, are found, as those used for building near Edinburgh and Newcastle. Of forty-eight species of fossil plants or trees, detected in the strata of Nova Scotia, thirty-seven are identical with those discovered in the British beds; and, in the United States, thirty-five out of fifty-three species are described as specifically the same with the European fossils. But the most remarkable of Sir Charles’s discoveries is that, in the prodigious thickness and singular structure of the coal-basin in Nova Scotia, there are the remains of more than ten forests which rose up successively one over the other, and which, with their interposed layers of clays and solid stone, deposited at intervals, constitute a series of beds, whose vertical thickness is 14,570 feet.
II. The Economic History of Coal.—It does not appear, from any well authenticated records, at what precise period man availed himself of this useful mineral, either for the purposes of art, or of domestic comfort. The early history of nations is traditionary; but there is no tradition from very remote times, in any of them, as to the discovery of coal—no philosopher speculating about the importance of the fact and its bearings on the progress of civilization—no poet extolling the genius of the new Prometheus, that brought up the fiery combustible from the bowels of earth. The aborigines who dwelt amidst the primeval forests had no occasion to seek farther for fuel, when every hill and plain supplied them with all that was needed, and more than was convenient, as the cultivation of the soil engaged attention. Accident, doubtless, would first lead to the knowledge of the virtues of the hidden treasure. As the ground was cleared, and cities became populous, and the arts advanced, more diligence would be exercised in its search; and in proportion as it came, from the destruction of the woods, to be regarded as a necessary or luxury of life, coal would be sought for as an article of barter, or of commerce. Thus many ages might elapse before coal was introduced into general consumption, and though stored up specially for man, it was wisely ordered that the supplies and incumbrances on the surface should first be exhausted or removed, ere the inner chambers of his habitation were broken into and explored.
Bituminous matter, if not the carboniferous system itself, exists abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates. In the basin of the Nile coal has been recently detected. It occurs sparingly in some of the states of Greece: and Theophrastus, in his “History of Stones,” refers to mineral coal (lithanthrax) being found in Liguria, and in Elis, and used by the smiths; the stones are earthy, he adds, but kindle and burn like wood coals (the anthrax). But by none of the oriental nations does it appear that the vast latent powers and virtues of the mineral were thus early discovered, so as to render it an object of commerce or of geological research. What the Romans termed lapis ampelites, is generally understood to mean our cannel coal, which they used not as fuel, but in making toys, bracelets, and other ornaments; while their carbo, which Pliny describes as “vehementer perlucet,” was simply the petroleum or naphtha, which issues so abundantly from all the tertiary deposits. Coal is found in Syria, and the term frequently occurs in the sacred writings. But there is no reference anywhere in the inspired record as to digging or boring for the mineral—no directions for its use—no instructions as to its constituting a portion of the promised treasures of the land. In their burnt-offerings, wood appears uniformly to have been employed; in Leviticus, the term is used as synonymous with fire, where it is said that “the priests shall lay the parts in order upon the wood, that is, on the fire which is upon the altar.” And in the same manner for all domestic purposes, wood and charcoal were invariably made use of. Doubtless the ancient Hebrews would be acquainted with natural coal, as in the mountains of Lebanon, whither they continually resorted for their timber, seams of coal near Beirout were seen to protrude through the superincumbent strata in various directions. Still there are no traces of pits or excavations into the rock to show that they duly appreciated the extent and uses of the article. Their term גחל, which properly signifies charcoal, appears to have passed into the northern languages, as in the Islandic gloa; the Danish gloe; the Welsh glo, a coal, golen to give light; the Irish o-gual; and the Cornish kolan—terms all expressive of the act of burning or of giving light.
For many reasons it would seem that, among modern nations, the primitive Britons were the first to avail themselves of the valuable combustible. The word by which it is designated is not of Saxon, but of British extraction, and is still employed to this day by the Irish, in their form of o-gual, and in that of kolan by the Cornish. In Yorkshire stone hammers and hatchets have been found in old mines, showing that the early Britons worked coals before the invasion of the Romans. Manchester,[6] which has risen upon the very ashes of the mineral, and grown to all its wealth and greatness under the influence of its heat and light, next claims the merit of the discovery. Portions of coal have been found under or imbedded in the sand of a Roman way, excavated some years ago for the construction of a house, and which, at the time, were ingeniously conjectured by the local antiquaries to have been collected for the use of the garrison, stationed on the route of these warlike invaders at Mancenion, or the Place of Tents. Certain it is, that fragments of coal are being constantly, in the district, washed out and brought down by the Medlock and other streams, which break from the mountains through the coal strata. The attention of the inhabitants would, in this way, be the more early and readily attracted by the glistening substance.
Nevertheless, for long after, coal was but little valued or appreciated, turf and wood being the common articles of consumption throughout the country. About the middle of the ninth century, a grant of land was made by the Abbey of Peterborough, under the restriction of certain payments in kind to the monastery, among which are specified sixty carts of wood, and as showing their comparative worth, only twelve carts of pit-coal. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Newcastle is said to have traded in the article, and by a charter of Henry III, of date 1284, a license is granted to the burgesses to dig for the mineral. About this period, coals, for the first time, began to be imported into London, but were made use of only by smiths, brewers, dyers, and other artisans, when, in consequence of the smoke being regarded as very injurious to the public health, Parliament petitioned the king, Edward I, to prohibit the burning of coal, on the ground of being an intolerable nuisance. A proclamation was granted, conformable to the prayer of the petition; and the most severe inquisitorial measures were adopted to restrict or altogether abolish the use of the combustible, by fine, imprisonment, and destruction of the furnaces and workshops! They were again brought into common use in the time of Charles I, and have continued to increase steadily with the extension of the arts and manufactures, and the advancing tide of population, until now, in the metropolis and suburbs, coals are annually consumed to the amount of about three millions of tons. The use of coal in Scotland seems to be connected with the rise of the monasteries, institutions which were admirably suited to the times, the conservators of learning, and pioneers of art and industry all over Europe, and in whose most rigorous exactions evidences can always be traced of a judicious and enlightened concern for the general improvement of the country. Under the regime of monastic rule at Dunfermline, coals were worked in the year 1291—at Dysart, and other places along the coast, about half a century later—and, generally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the inhabitants were assessed in coals to the churches and chapels, which, after the Reformation, have still continued to be paid in many parishes. Boëthius records that, in his time, the inhabitants of Fife and the Lothians dug “a black stone,” which, when kindled, gave out a heat sufficient to melt iron.
How long will the coal-metals of the British isles last at the present, or even an increased expenditure of the fuel? So great has been the discrepancy, and so little understood the data on which to form a calculation, that the authorities variously estimate from two hundred to two thousand years. For home consumption the present rate is about thirty-two millions of tons annually. The export is about six millions: and yet such is the enormous mass of this combustible inclosed in one field alone, that no boundary can be fixed, even the most remote, for its exhaustion. The coal trade of Great Britain is nearly in the proportion of three to two of that of all the other nations of the world; while in superficial area her coal measures are to those of the United States only as 11,859 square miles to 133,132 square miles. What a vision of the future is hereby disclosed! If rightly employed, if the arts and progressive development of society at all keep pace with the means provided, the human race in the New World have a destiny to run, and a work of civilization to accomplish, to which the Old, in its brightest achievements, can furnish but a faint analogy. Scarcely two centuries have elapsed since coal was employed as an article of domestic use, or introduced upon the most limited scale into the manufactures; its now ascertained extent and boundless latent powers were not dreamt of or imagined even but half a century ago; and very recently the lamentation was general, that no coal-measures existed in the mighty continent of America. Who now can fancy a limit to the social movement with which that vast hemisphere is heaving all over—the advancing tide of its population spreading in every region—the forests cleared and covered with a net-work of railways, the rivers bridged from end to end with a navy of steamships—and all vivified and in motion through the agency of this long undiscovered product of the earth? Geological time rolled on, and the surface of our planet was replenished with the hidden treasure, and the man of science has no numbers to reckon the years that are past. More agreeable far to look through the vista of coming events, where a moral era has commenced out of which a mightier series of phenomena will emerge, the purposes of a wise Providence be illustrated in so transmuting and preserving the entombed relics of distant ages, and the glories of the latter day arise, when the desert place shall teem with a new life, and the wilderness give praise to the Creator of all.