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 world is 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 the real Kohinoor 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 of carbonic 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.