S4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Other attempts to find coal in this part of the basin were made 
some years later. Thus in 1866 a boring was put down on Coal Creek 
at a point about six miles southeast of that just described, which reached 
a depth of ninety-seven feet. No log of this boring is now avail- 
able. In 1870 a third boring was commenced about one mile north of 
the first which reached a depth of 218 feet and was reported to have 
passed through a bed of coal six inches thick at ninety-six feet from 
the surface. 
The uncertainty resulting from the finding of the mixed coal and 
shale in the boring of 1837, led the government of the province, in 1872, 
to purchase a diamond drill to finally test the problem of the existence 
of lower seams of coal in this area. The machine was located at New- 
castle Bridge, three miles from the shore of the lake, near the principal 
outcrops of the coals which were being mined. 
The first of these holes with the diamond drill passed through a 
seam of coal one foot ten inches thick, underlaid by a further thickness 
of coal and shale of ten inches. The boring was carried down to a depth 
of 170 feet, but no further indications of coal were observed. 
The second hole was located on the bank of the creek at a point 
about a fourth of a mile north of and seventy feet lower than the first. 
The starting point was beneath the level of the surface seam and there- 
fore this was not found. Grayish sandstones and conglomerates with 
an occasional stratum of shale were penetrated to a depth of 211 feet, 
the boring at this depth being in a coarse gray grit and conglomerate. 
These rested upon hard gray micaceous slates with quartz veins which 
are a portion of a Devonian outlier, seen on Coal Creek several miles to 
the northeast. These were bored to a further depth of 155 feet, the 
slaty character continuing throughout. 
A third boring was made near the shore of the lake about two miles 
southeast of these. This passed through gray sandstones and shales 
with occasional reddish layers, which graduated into purple sandstones, 
to a depth of 260 feet from the surface, when the slaty rocks of the 
Devonian underlying ridge were reached. These were pierced to a 
further depth of 138 feet. 
No trace of coal was found in this boring. The elevation of the 
starting point above the lake was not accurately taken, but it was about 
fifty feet higher than the second boring on Newcastle Creek, and it 
would appear that the rocks of the Newcastle basin to the north lie in a 
shallow syncline, and that the third hole was commenced near the crest 
of a low anticline, since at Flower’s Cove a couple of miles further 
south a thin bed of coal outcrops which has been mined and is similar 
in character to the beds worked further north. 

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