GEOLOGY — COAL OF VANCOUVER'S ISLAND. 65 



Physical and chemical characters. — While having much the appearance and character of that 

 from Coose bay, this coal is harder and better, and more resembles the carboniferous coals of 

 the Mississippi valley. Several analyses give me for its composition — 



Fixed carbon 47.63 



Bitumen 50.22 



Ashes 2.15 



Its economical value and adaptation to the different purposes for which coal is used are very 

 similar to those of the Coose bay coal, but commands a somewhat higher price in market. 

 When I was in San Francisco, coal from Bellingham bay was selling for $22 per ton. 



VANCOUVER'S ISLAND COAL. 



Geological position. — Very little has heretofore been known of the geology of Vancouver's 

 island except that extensive deposits of coal existed there. The island is inhabited by Indians 

 of a peculiarly warlike character who have always been hostile to the whites, and have rendered 

 it dangerous to attempt to explore its geology. 



It is also said to be, for the most part, covered with a dense forest and tangled thickets of 

 vine-maple, which present almost insurmountable obstacles to any one who should attempt to 

 penetrate the interior. At Nanimo, however, a small English colony has been established, 

 and the deposits of coal which are found there have been, to some extent, worked for the San 

 Francisco market, and to supply the English steamers which sometimes touch there. 



I have been able to obtain but little information in reference to the geological associations of 

 the coal of Vancouver's island ; the only persons who have visited the island, to my knowledge, 

 having examined only that portion immediately adjacent to the coal mines of Nanimo. They 

 have also contented themselves with a hasty inspection of the mines, and with collecting the 

 fossils, which seemed to be abundant, without taking much note of the relative positions of the 

 strata which contain them. I have received from them, however, a full suite of specimens of 

 the coal, and a series of fossils of great beauty and of special geological interest. 



The fossils consist, for the most part, of marine shells, of which the most conspicuous are 

 Ammonites, Baculites, &c, of large size, and evidently derived from cretaceous rocks. These 

 fossils occur in calcareous concretions and so much resemble, in their mode of fossilization, those 

 brought from the upper Missouri by Mr. Meek and Dr. Hayden, that they would be supposed 

 to have come from the same locality. Of the species obtained from Vancouver's island many 

 are new, but some are identical with those from the upper Missouri and fully establish the 

 parallelism of the cretaceous strata which occur on different sides of the Rocky mountains. The 

 discovery of cretaceous fossils, as far west as the Island of Vancouver, seemed to me a fact of 

 peculiar geological interest ; not only as extending over an area far greater than has been sus- 

 pected the cretaceous rocks of the upper Missouri, but as furnishing a basis upon which we shall 

 probably find the Miocene tertiaries to rest, as on the eastern slope of the Rocky mountains. It 

 is not uninteresting to note, also, that the Miocene strata of the upper Missouri are peculiarly 

 characterized by beds of lignite, which have attracted the attention of every traveller who has 

 passed up or down that river ; and that, on descending the Columbia, below the region covered 

 with recent volcanic material, we find a series of Miocene deposits, which are also associated 

 with great accumulations of carbonaceous matter. 



It is true that much of the lignite of the Pacific coast is more compact, approaches nearer to 

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