294 THE PICTOU COAL FIELD — POOLE. 



due cast, and gives a course that is continued to the flanks of 

 Weaver's Mountain. 



Numerous trial pits were put down in early days along Coal 

 brook, and the record of these pits is given in Haliburton's 

 Historj^ of Nova Scotia. In the exposures below the crop of the 

 Main seam the presence was then discovered of several coals 

 lying between the Main and McGregor seams. A surface cut 860 

 feet long was made in 1828 down the valley of the brook, and 

 the measures immediately overlying the Main seam found to be 

 barren of coal. The timber used in covering this cut was found 

 to be sound when again exposed after a period of 60 years : 

 a branch from it drained the Patrick pit and its crop workings 

 until the Dalhousie pit crushed after the fire of 1867. 



From the banks of the East river levels were driven in on the 

 Main and Deep seams, but to what extent there is no record. 

 When the Deep seam level was driven it gave off a great deal of 

 gas, and cut off the source of supply to the river's bank, where 

 previously gas had bubbled up so freely that it would maintain 

 a fire, and had been utilized by women for washing purposes as 

 late as the fifties. On the east bank of the river, Adam Carr, in 

 1818, had driven an adit, and worked it for Mortimer & Smith, 

 the lessees, but at a loss it was subsequently claimed, as the 

 seam had so deteriorated in that direction. It was in these old 

 workings that Avrick, the overman, was badly burnt by gas in 

 November, 1849, when looking for stolen goods. The explosion 

 on that occasion was sufficiently violent to be heard across the 

 river half a mile away. Later on, in 1867, a German company 

 (Hartley's Report, p. 74) re opened the place and drove to the 

 deep, but failed to find the coal improve in quality, only some 

 two feet being regarded as good. The level extended to the east 

 probably 400 feet, and the slope to a depth of 130 feet. 



Carr also sometime previous to 1827 worked to a small extent 

 the crops of both the Main and Deep seams on Coal brook, 

 selecting the better portions of the seams. The publis?ied section y 

 4, page 68 of the Report gives the thickness of the measures \ 

 found in this locality, and it is interesting to compare it with 



