Lesley.] 184 [March. 



by the strike (N. E. and S. W.) of the more upturned rocks of the 

 southeastern side of the synclinal. With the exception of the Great 

 Kanawha main stream, a line drawn along so as just to touch the ex- 

 treme tips of all the outermost twigs of these water-trees, will give 

 the southeastern limit of the great Alleghany Mountain or Cumber- 

 land Mountain coal area. Their waters collect in flowing northwest, 

 break through the central measures and higher coals of the synclinal, 

 and either join the Ohio (which flows along the depression between 

 the upper and lower coal systems of the True Carboniferous), or the 

 Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers further south. 



From this short description it may be inferred, and it is a correct 

 inference, that this belt of synclinal, is in great measure an irre- 

 claimable mountain wilderness; a labyrinth of narrow hog-back 

 ridges and steep, deep, winding vales, providing spaces for agricul- 

 ture only along the narrow margins of the principal streams, and at 

 here and there a little upland plain, caught in between the head- 

 waters of half a dozen fan-shaped systems of drainage ; but all the 

 rest covered with an everlasting forest, folding over the furrowed 

 face of the earth. The region consists in fact of myriads of secluded 

 glens, surrounded by stair-like cliff's from four to eight hundred feet 

 in height, and separated by spiculse of mountain, which shoot out 

 from the more central water-divides, like crystals of ice over the sur- 

 face of a pool. The extremely tortuous course of the principal 

 streams is illustrated by the map. They do not flow from side to side 

 of wide, flat valleys, but around sharp mountain prongs, which point 

 across towards opposite open ravines or valleys of considerable 

 length. These prongs descend from the dividing high lands, like 

 the spurs of the Pyrenees from the central ridge, but in long steps, 

 the strata being nearly horizontal, and each sandrock in the descending 

 order carrying the nose out further than the one above it. Narrow 

 terraces carry the outcrops of the long steps of the nose, round each 

 side of the prong along the steep side of the valley. 



The coal-beds pass horizontally through the pronglike ridges from 

 valley to valley. Some of these ridges run as narrow on top and 

 as regular as railroad embankments, for three or four miles, and in 

 nearly straight" lines, between equally straight vales terminating bowl- 

 shaped against some cross ridge. 



It is across such vales and dividing ridges, that the Asphaltum 

 vein of Wood County makes a straight course, A B upon the map, 

 "2323 feet long, as at first measured, but since then traced in both 

 directions still further, so that now it is known to extend more than 



