318 W. II. WEED — TWO MONTANA COAL FIELDS. 



The floor of the newer workings is the thick parting of slate over the 

 bottom bench of coal. En driving the entries this lower coal is extracted. 

 and there is some 3 feet of slate between the coal and the underlying 

 sandrock. The floor rolls up and down a good deal but runs into regular 

 strata. 



The none at present is worked by the pillar-and-room system. Two 

 main entries are run. with side entries driven at right angles to them. 

 The main entries are 24 feet wide, timbered where the roof slate is thin. 

 but usually having a line of pillars in the center only. The right-angle 

 entries are driven 12 feet wide at the roof and no timbering is necessary. 

 The usual Mi) feet of coal is left between the air entry and the main entries. 

 The rooms are 24 feet wide, with a 12-foot pillar, and cross-cuts every loo 

 feet : but where the coal-cutting machines are used the rooms are 50 feet 

 wide with a 15-foot pillar, and 20 feet between belts. 



The miners are. as usual, paid by the amount of lump coal delivered, 

 weighed as it i> dumped over screens into box cars, an automatic scat- 

 terer being used for loading. The nut coal averages 15 per cent of the 

 output, and there i- lo per cent of slack. The nut coal meets with a 

 ready sale, and the slack- is hauled away by the Greal Northern railway 

 and used as ballast. The cost of ordinary outdoor labor is $2.50 per 

 day. The miners are paid at the rate of 81.00 per ton. 



Belt Creek Basix and Mines. 



As tin.- plateau summit between Sand coulee and Belt creek is drift- 

 covered, no continuous ledge can be traced; but the low inclination of 

 the beds and the exposures seen on Box Elder creek and it< tributaries 

 are sufficient to establish the identity of the coal strata of Beltcreek with 

 those of Sand coulee. The prominent features of the topography are 

 the flat table-lands which extend eastward to the slope- of the High- 

 wood mountains and southward to the uplands of the Belt range. 

 Natural section- of the strata are found in small drainage cuttings trench- 

 ing the plateau walls. These are sufficiently illustrated in the general 

 section already given, which was made here 1 . 



The strata of the licit creek basin possess a gentle northerly dip with 

 an extremely gentle local anticlinal fold in the center of the basin- 

 The rocks of the coal measures are the same as those found along Sand 

 coulee. The coal lies beneath a cap-rock of hard quartzose sandstone 

 60 to 75 feet thick in the southern part of the basin, though hut 25 feet 

 thick at the Armington mines. It is a coarse gray, very massive sand- 

 stone, having a prominent outcrojj tinted pink by the wash from the 

 shales above. The slope- above this ledge are usually grassy and show 



