106 Featherstonhavgh s Geological Report. 



continuity of deposites of this character is very variable, and 

 no calculation can be made either of their extent or thickness, 

 unless the beds have been very generally worked and for a 

 long time. This is not the case with the coal, which takes its 

 origin from a different cause, and which develops itself in 

 many neighboring localities, with the greatest assurance of its 

 being continuous. Frostburg is the summit level of the country, 

 and the beds lie generally in the same horizontal manner in 

 which they were deposited ; from which the inference maybe 

 safely drawn that they were deposited posterior to the move 

 ment which has given an anticlinal arrangement to all the 

 beds lying between them and Georgetown. 



From Frostburg I descended the valley of George s creek 

 eighteen miles, to the village of Westernport, on the northern 

 branch of the Potomac. The valley is hemmed in by lofty 

 hills, containing various veins of coal. Three miles beyond 

 Westernport and one beyond the mouth of Savage river, the 

 Potomac has worn its way through a ridge, apparently nine 

 hundred feet high at least, making a gap of a mile wide. On 

 the south side is a very curious vertical section, ( Diagram 

 No. 14,* ) exhibiting the rare spectacle of six workable veins of 

 coal, containing near forty feet of coal and two bands of iron 

 ore. The uppermost of these veins is about sixteen feet thick, 

 and is about eight hundred feet from the level of the river. 

 The six-feet vein of this locality has a band about one foot 

 thick of argillaceous shale in the centre, like the vein at Frost 

 burg, and the three-feet vein is somewhat pyritiferous. These 

 circumstances may assist future observers in their inquiries 

 whether these veins are continuous and identical. The coal 

 is nearly at the same height at both localities, Frostburg being 

 one thousand two hundred and seventy-five feet above the 

 level of Cumberland, and the summit of the section near 

 Savage river having about the same elevation, the truncated 



* In this diagram, the thickness and succession of the coal veins are put down 

 without reference to the thickness of the beds of sandstone which separate them. 



