the mouth of the slope, and the coal hoisted into it; but as provision has to be made for the disposal of the slate which accumulates in the mine, there is probably little gained by the arrangement. Much of the slate and "bony coal" that occurs in the vein is separated below, and then hauled up and thrown around the slope, where, in connection with the debris of the breaker, it often forms immense artificial hills. But as the slope itself is generally sitnated on the side of a mountain the breaker is at the foot of it, and upon a level with the railroad over which the coal is borne off to market. When the cars, therefore, come up from the slope they often descend by gravitation to the top of the breaker, or, if there be no such inclination, | ten to twenty horse-power, and they are conthey are hauled back and forth by mules. The coal at the Price Wetherill colliery, it will be observed, has to be hoisted up-employing for this purpose the same steam-power that is applied to the breaker. The breaker is also fed by two slopes, one being immediately in the rear of it, and the other some distance to the right. The colliery is one of the most complete and extensive in the coal region, and has been erected at a cost of over one hundred thousand dollars. The coal-breaker is, of course, operated by steam-the capacity of the engines varying from FRONT VIEW OF THE BREAKER. structed on the same plan as those used at the slopes. The annexed sketches exhibit the form and structure of the machinery, and the interior arrangement of the establishment. The loaded car appears at the top of the rollers, ready to be dumped, when the coal passes over the shute (6) into the landing (5), where men are stationed, with picks and hammers, to, break the larger pieces as the mass moves forward. It now passes to the rollers through a hole about a yard in length by six or eight inches in width the hopper (4) feeding it in a regular and continuous quantity. The figures 8 and 9 are the rollers, which, revolving with great rapidity toward each other, break the lumps of coal as they fall between them. Figure 10 is the screen into which the coal is conducted from the hopper (11) as it falls from the rollers. From the screen, the coal again falls into shutes (12), where it is stored, ready to be transferred to the railway cars. Figure 1 indicates the flywheel of the breaker; 2, a pulley on the fly-wheel shaft; 3, the breaker shaft; 13, the fly-wheel of the engine; 14, the pulley on engine shaft; 15, bed-plates for engine; and 16, the location of the boiler. Such is the side view. Taking our stand in front, we shall see the movement of the coal as it falls from the rollers into the screen, and thence into the shareholders. Their main trunks connect the shutes. The screen is divided into four sections, and, being in a slightly inclined position, receives the coal from the hopper (figure 2) at its elevated end. Figure 1 shows the rollers, the upper one being solid, and the other perforated between the teeth. This is to avoid, as much as possible, the crushing or grinding of the coal. Figure 4 is the shaft which turns the screen. Now the screen being divided into sections, the net-work of the first produces the smallest size of coal, called "pea," which falls into the proper compartment of the shutes below (9). The net-work of the second section is a little larger, and furnishes the size known as "egg coal," which, in turn, falls into shute 8. The third section is again larger, and produces "stove coal," which is received into shute 7. The fourth section furnishes "broken coal," and it falls into 6, while the remainder, being too large in size to penetrate the net-work, passes, out of the end of the screen, and falls into the shute 5. This variety is known as "lump coal.", As the coal falls from the screen boys are stationed in the shutes to pick out the slate and impure coal, and it is truly astonishing to observe with what activity they will discover and seize the proscribed intruders. They often perform their work carelessly, however, and then the consumer commits the egregious blunder of denouncing the quality of the coal instead of the culpable slate-pickers. There are usually two sets of screens and shutes at every breaker, so that in case of accident to one the other may be used. The shutes will hold from three to, five hundred tons, and they are filled at least once a day during the season of navigation. The cars of the Reading Railroad and of the Schuylkill Navigation are sent over the lateral railways to the several mines, where they are drawn under the shutes of the breakers and filled. They are then brought back to the landings at Port Carbon or Schuylkill Haven, and if the coal is to be shipped by canal, it is dumped into the dock shutes or directly into the boats; and if by railway, then the cars are rearranged into trains for Port Richmond, Philadelphia, or intermediate stations. The cars being labeled in numerical order, are consigned by the operator by the numbers which they respectively bear. Two tickets are filled up, one of which is taken by the conductor of the train, and serves to identify the cars and the coal at the weighscales, while the other is retained by the operator. After the weight is ascertained new bills are made out, one of which goes to the receiver of the coal, and the other to the proper officers of the railroad at the point of delivery. The cost of transportation over the Reading road is usually about two cents per ton per mile, and is always collected from the receiver of the coal; while that of the lateral roads, varying from ten to thirty cents per ton, according to the distance, is paid by the operators. There are five or six of these lateral roads owned by as many different companies, and all operated with profit to with the Reading Railroad and the docks of the canal, from which they diverge and radiate into numerous branches to the mines. There are more than one hundred such branches, having an aggregate length of 500 miles, including about 150 miles under ground. But let us return to the mine. Below the turning platform at the foot of the slope is a sump from thirty to forty feet in depth, and of the same width as the slope, into which the water from all the avenues of the mine is drained. The pipes through which the water is pumped up extend from the sump to the mouth of the slope, and their diameter ranges from twelve to eighteen inches. There is also a considerable variation both in the length of stroke of the engine and the number of revolutions per minute. However, the amount of water raised from some of the mines is almost incredible. In rainy seasons they are frequently overflowed, and it taxes the strength of the pumping machinery to relieve them. Four thousand hogsheads of water have, in some cases, been pumped up in eight hours; while the aggregate amount raised each day, from the seventy-five slopes now in operation, is estimated at 385, 725 hogsheads. Indeed, the amount of water from each mine is much more than sufficient to float away the coal, and the upper levels of Schuylkill, during times of drought, are often sustained solely by the supplies thus received. The entire coalbasin being porous or cellular, like a sponge, nearly all the water that falls into it sinks into the mines, whence it is furnished in regular supplies to the canal without any appreciable loss by evaporation. The coal strata of the Schuylkill are somewhat impaired in value by the frequent occurrence of "faults," and especially the veins of the upper or red-ash group. When the continuity of a vein is destroyed or interrupted by the intrusion of rock or dirt, or by a deposit of soft and impure coal, it is termed a Fault. And again the vein often pinches out into a mere | poses of the miner. Another serious difficulty is that of ventilation, and this unfortunately increases with the depth of the workings. Thus far, however, the matter has occasioned no particular embarrassment, since the mines themselves have attained no great depth. The deepest in the region hardly exceeds a thousand feet perpendicular, while in England some of the collieries are nearly two thousand feet deep. The ventilation is consequently expensive and difficult of attainment. Besides the evils flowing from an impure air the coal itself constantly discharges gases which, in a certain state of combination with the atmosphere, produce what are termed "fire-damp explosions." Their escape from the breasts of coal creates a peculiar hissing sound, and when the ventilation is imperfect the liability to danger is always present. An explosion of fire-damp is similar to that of powder, except that it is often far more violent and terrific. The air is converted into a cloud of fire, and every thing is dashed to atoms that falls within its grasp. The fiery tempest seizes the rubbish of the mine, the timbers, and fragments of loose coal, and hurls them against the sidewalls; the men, if they elude the sirocco blast, have their ears, mouth, and nostrils filled with sand and dust, and sustain more or less bodily injury from the mere violence of the atmospheric concussion. They often avoid the fire by falling on their faces and letting the demon ride over them, for if caught within its range death is the almost certain result. The fire-damp is generally succeeded by the "choke-damp," unless the ventilating current is strong. The atmospheric air being destroyed by the explosion, for a time there is left nothing to breathe but poisonous vapor-hence suffocation commonly ensues. In England, on one occasion, out of 200 men in the mine during an explosion, 196 were instantly killed. In France, on a Monday morning, when the miners, one after the other, were descending to their work, the first fell dead, seized with asphyxia; the next one attempted to aid him, and, coming within the stratum of carbonic acid, also fell dead; the third, fourth, and fifth shared a like fate, and there is no telling where the evil would have stopped had not the sixth turned round and forced the others to return up the shaft. The number of victims to these terrible casualties in the coal-mines of England became so alarming that the Government, some years ago, instituted measures for the better security of life; for although the safety-lamp invented by Sir Humphrey Davy enables one to explore the mine and penetrate the fiery accumulations with impunity, it can not be conveniently used for the ordinary purVOL. XV.-No. 88.-G G It is too expensive and too inefficient as a light. As nothing short of THE DAVY LAMP. The common mode of ventilating the mines of this region is upon the principle of withdrawing. For this purpose air-shafts are pierced from the breasts of coal to the surface, directly over which, or some of them, fires are constantly maintained. The draft thus occasioned creates a strong current of air in the mine below, and generally secures the object desired. But while the air in the gangways is nearly always good, that of the breasts is more or less defective, owing to the difficulty of forcing or conducting the atmospheric currents through them; and it therefore often becomes necessary to employ fans and banners, either to drive the foul air out or the pure air in. Explosions of fire-damp have been increasing with alarming rapidity; but in most cases they are the results of sheer carelessness on the part of the miners themselves. It is a lamentable fact-and to such as have occasion to descend into mines whose ventilation is imperfect, it is by no means a pleasant reflection-that out of a gang of fifty or sixty men you can always count on a certain proportion of ignorant and reckless characters, who hold the lives and limbs of all the others in the tenure of their criminal folly and stupidity. Although the social and moral condition of our mining population is not as good as many of us would like to see it, it is yet infinitely superior to that of the same class in Europe. It is composed almost exclusively of foreigners, and includes representatives in about equal proportions from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Germany. When engaged in the mines the miner attaches his lamp to the side of his cap, and there is probably nothing peculiar in his appearance except that his face and hands COAL-MINER. are blackened and his clothes all wet and besmeared with coal mud. His shoes are coarse and heavy-the soles being very thick and completely covered with little broad-headed nails, to resist the encroachments of water and the sharp edges of the coal débris. Apart from the accidents to which they are exposed, they are otherwise extremely healthy. They know little but what pertains to their subterraneous employment, and in connection with it some of thom have ideas of geological order of far more practical value than the high-strung theories of the learned professors. They are to some extent superstitious-as, for example, it is regarded as an evil omen for a visitor in the mine to whistle or hum an air. Some of their technical words indicate their apprehension of supernatural spirits and evil genii as existing in the mines. The Cornish miners, who are usually found in lead and copper regions, have a most ridiculous habit of giving a loud grunt with every blow of the pick or hammer. dense variety on the Lehigh (and this is the strongest anthracite coal ever found on the face of the globe). North of the Schuylkill are the basins of the Mahanoy and Shamokin; while east of them are several small detached ones, as the Hazleton, Beaver Meadow, Buck Mountain, etc., all of whose coal (except the two former) is shipped over the Lehigh Canal and the Valley Railroad. The coal of the Mahanoy is drawn over the Broad Mountain by means of steam inclined planes, and reaches the Atlantic markets via the Schuylkill; that of Shamokin descends the Susquehanna River, or goes north via the Sunbury and Elmira railways. North of all these basins lies that of Wyoming-beautiful alike for its unsurpassed scenery, its romantic settlement and history, and, to the geologist, for the regularity of its coal measures. Like the Schuylkill basin, it is about five miles in width by nearly seventy in length. The Lackawanna Creek drains the eastern portion, and meets the Susquehanna River in the centre of the basin. Entering the valley from the north, the river abruptly changes its course toward the west, and then glides down the middle of it some ten miles below Wilkesbarre, where it again deviates from the canal, and passes through the Nanticoke Mountains. The coal of the Lackawanna has several outlets: the Railway of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, just completed, are the avenues to the Atlantic markets, while the North Branch Canal supplies the interior country north and west of Scranton. A cross-section of the Wyoming basin in the vicinity of Wilkesbarre exhibits five or six distinct but gently-sloping axes, the southern one being comparatively level, and the coal lying near to the surface. The whole basin appears to be remarkably free from disturbance of any kind. In the vicinity of the Nanticoke, where the measures begin to rise toward their western termination, the veins of coal occur in great purity and extraordinary thickness; and the excavations of the Grand Tunnel, and those of the Baltimore Company near Wilkesbarre, are nothing short of a physical phenomenon. A stage-coach, a locomotive and train might be driven through the ex The Schuylkill coal basin is supposed to contain thirteen distinct seams of coal. At one time it was thought to embrace a hundred or more, but this originated in mistaking the different out-crops, where they only described saddles, for so many veins. The combustible qualities of the coal are divided into three classes, determined by the color of their ashes-the low-cavated avenues of these mines. The principal er veins producing white, the middle gray or pink, and the upper red ashes. The first is preferred for smelting and puddling iron; the second for heating furnaces in houses, and the third for grates and cooking. But besides the marked differences in these three varieties in the economy of combustion, there is also a local difference in the character of the coal from the same veins; there is, in fact, all the difference in the qualities of coal that we find in different kinds of wood. Besides the distinguishing color of the ash, the coal graduates from a soft, semi-bituminous at the Susquehanna, to a free burner on the Swatara-a fine, compact and 4. coal at the Schuylkill, to an exceedingly vein at Nanticoke is thirty-five feet thick, at Wilkesbarre twenty-eight, Pillston fourteen, and Scranton about ten feet. The veins, it thus appears, thin out toward their eastern termini, and most likely come closer together. The Baluimore mines have been worked for many years, and it is worth a journey across the Atlantic to see them. The great vein was at first operated in open quarry, but the top covering having increased in thickness with the slope of the strata, it was found more economical to pursue the coal under ground, as in the case of the Lehigh mines. The measures having been thus cut down perpendicularly, six or seven openings were made into the coal, and up to the present moment we are informed that about twenty-five acres have been excavated. Probably not more than two-thirds of the coal, however, has been removed, as it was necessary to leave large masses of it remaining to support the overlying rock and soil. The light admitted by these openings reveals several acres of the interior, and there appears before you a stupendous forest of rounded pillars of coal. The scene thus presented is one of those things which neither pen nor pencil can portray; it must be seen. The roof is some twenty-five feet above the floor, and it is not only perfectly smooth but often has the glossy polish peculiar to the laminated slates. The mine is free from water, and the air pure and invigorating. The cost of cutting the coal is as near nothing as a combination of favorable circumstances could approach, while there is apparently enough of it to supply the civilized world for ages to come. Indeed, a casual inspection of this monster vein, which also exists in the Schuylkill and some of the other basins, will dispel all apprehensions as to the exhaustibility of our anthracite coalfields. But large as these fields are, they are but the mere outlyers of the still more stupendous coal formation of the Appalachian chain of mountains. This vast bituminous region, including the basins east and west of the Missouri River, contains at least twice the aggregate amount of workable coal of all the rest of the known world combined; and lying, as it does, mainly within the valley and tributaries of the Mississippi, its commercial value is entirely beyond the scope of arithmetical computation. The whole country, from the Gulf of Mexico to that of the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland, originally comprised one grand coal-field. Detached portions of it are scattered along the Rio Grande and Chihuahua rivers in Mexico, as well as upon some of their branches in Texas; numerous isolated beds occur on the Red and Arkansas rivers; while further north lies that of Missouri, separated from the Illinois only by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The southeastern point is pierced by the Ohio, and it approaches within some fifty miles of the Alleghany coal, which, lying in a position nearly north and south, runs parallel with the Atlantic plain for a distance of 750 miles. On the eastern slope of the mountains are the isolated beds of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and a portion of the semi-bituminous, bituminous, and the great anthracite basins of Pennsylvania. It originally traversed portions of New York and the New England States, where small deposits and traces of impure coal are found; but the invasion of the sea, in its northern course, has overflowed the beds, leaving those of the British provinces literally to emerge from the water which surrounds them. Pennsylvania, of itself, has a greater area of coal than all England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Spain, France, and Belgium united. It is only exceeded by the British provinces, whose coal is but the terminus of our own formation. They contain a coal area of 18,000 square miles; Pennsylvania has a surface of not quite 14,000, or nearly one-third of its whole area. Large |