4^0 Accounl oflhc new Coal-Works at Brer a. 



Mr. William Huglies, a coal-viewer from Flintshire, fixed on a 

 spot, higher up the River, where advantage might be taken of its 

 fall, to turn wheels for pumping and drawing the Coals, if found ; 

 and which on boreing there, were found, in a new double seam, 

 of excellent quality at 79 yards deep, the upper bed being 3^ feet, 

 and the lower 1 ^ foot thick, separated by 2 feet of black cluneh, 

 and dipping I in 4^ to the SE ; sieveral tons of which Coals 

 liad been raised previous to my examining Brora, and were daily 

 burned at Dunrobin Castle, while I was there, and gave gi-eat 

 satisfaction to every one, from their quality in burning; but i wa'4- 

 deprived of the advantage of inspecting the seam myself, by the 

 Fits then standing full of water, until the water-wheels and 

 pumps should be finished. Although the vast beds of Gravel 

 and blocks of stone scattered on this coast, and peat-lakes on 

 these, rendered the Field very difficult of investigation, yet it 

 appeared from my survey, pretty clearly, 1 think, that there Is 

 another workable seam of Coals, between that so long worked at 

 Inver-Brora, and this Brora seam, and several thin ones below 

 this, furnishing altogether a body of Coal, for ages of pretty ex- 

 tensive workings, or for centuries of supply to this Comity and 

 its vicinity. 



From the sea-shore at Dunrobin Pier, in front of the Castle, 

 to Golspie Bridge, and thence to Rhives Farm, there appears 

 a very singular conglomerate Limestone Rock, having in some 

 places large masses of compact steatite imbedded in it, and iu 

 others, imbedding grains of quartz, almost exactly like the mor- 

 tar of an O'ld wall ; on revising now my notes on this Rock, and 

 comparing them with mv subsequent observations on the Alber- 

 bury conglomerate Limestone (which also contains quartz grains) 

 1 see so many points of resemblance, as makes me think it pro- 

 bable, that both may alike belong to the unconformable yel/ow 

 Limestone, see page 168, of your present volume, and that these 

 very distant Coal-fields of Sutherland and Shropshire, may here- 

 after prove to be of the same strata? ; and even, that the micaceous 

 red sandstone, imbedding masses of varied conglomerate, in which 

 the pieces of reddish Granite are of all sizes, in Sutherland, may 

 prove to be over-lieing and unconformable to this Coal series, and 

 answer to the upper Red Marl, in which the Charnwood-Fore?t 

 and Malvern-chase Granites, and perhaps those of Devon and 

 Cornwall counties also, are imbedded ?. 



But I must hasten to mention a few other particulars of the 

 JBrora Coal-work, &c. which have been communicated to me by 

 Letters, since I returned from Sutherland. It does not appear 

 that Mr. Hughes, who has been mentioned, was again consulted, 

 after the Brora Pits had been sunk, by an Overseer and Men 

 iroHi Denbighshire, whom he brought there: but the entire 



manage- 



