BLACK DIAMONDS. 341 



In America it is remarkable that the first discovery of this mineral, 

 of which we have any written record, should have been made as far in 

 the interior as Illinois. It is mentioned by Father Hennepin in 1669, 

 when he found the outcrop of a seam on the Illinois River, where the town 

 of Ottawa now stands. The first that came into use, however, was that 

 from Virginia, near Richmond, which for a long time supplied the whole 

 Atlantic market. Anthracite (of which we produced over 21,000,000 

 tons in 1877) had quite a struggle to obtain a footing, as its value and 

 use were not known ; in fact, the first Lehigh coal sent to Philadelphia 

 in 1803 was considered worthless, and was broken up to be used on 

 the sidewalks. 



In the early days of this country, wood was so abundant and cheap, 

 and the means of transportation from the interior so limited, that the 

 demand for fossil fuel in the United States could be met by a few 

 thousand tons a year. We have no accurate record of the tonnage 

 which VKis produced, but it was about 1,600 tons of anthracite and 

 about 80,000 tons of bituminous in 1820, Avhich was one ton to every 

 one hundred and twenty persons of the population. As the country 

 was settled, railroads built, furnaces erected, and steam and machinery 

 came into greater and greater use, the demand increased, until in 1877 

 the production was one and a quarter ton to every man, woman, and 

 child of the Union — or 50,000,000 tons. The vast quantity represented 

 hy these figures can be better brought before the mind by stating that, 

 if this amount were packed in a solid mass, it would make a wall from 

 New York to Washington — two hundred and forty miles — ten feet wide 

 and eighty-five feet high ; while, if it were put together in the broken 

 state in which coal is commonly used, the wall would be one hundred 

 and sixty-one feet high. This tonnage places our country as the second 

 coal-producer in the world. Great Britain being first, with an output 

 in 1877 of about 130,000,000 tons. 



From what has been said regarding the power and wealth that this 

 article bestows, the following table shows that the American Union has 

 a most magnificent future prospect, as it is destined to become the 

 great fuel-producer of the earth ; and that not only because of the 

 vast area of its coal-fields, but because of the thousands of square miles 

 wherein the seams are so easily accessible to the miner; as they often 

 lie either above water-level or at very moderate depths, thus obviating 

 the expense of deep and costly shafts to reach them, and this is a very 

 great advantage. " So immense indeed are the riches of the American 

 coal-measures that, in their conception of the future development of 

 mankind, geographers, historians, philosophers, agree in the idea that 

 the United States have, especially in their coal-deposits, the elements 

 for the greatest and most perfect development of the human race" 

 (Lesquereux). 



