104 COAL-BEDS OF NEW BRUNSWICK 



Crossing another ridge, we descended upon thin- 

 bedded greenish - grey and grey sandstones, among 

 which, at Kichardson s saw-mills, a bed of coal had been 

 discovered, which I was anxious to see. We alighted, 

 therefore, and walked half-a-mile to the mill, where, in 

 the vertical banks of the brook, after its escape from the 

 mill, I dug into a bed of coal eight or nine inches thick. 

 It was a bituminous coal, soft and crumbly, but probably 

 harder within ; was embedded between several feet of 

 shale on each side, beyond which were alternations of 

 grey sandstones and shales. It dipped at a high angle 

 towards the south and east. This coal is in itself of no 

 importance, but it may serve as a guide in the search for 

 other more valuable beds, if such are indeed to be hoped 

 for in this part of New Brunswick. 



This doubt is suggested by the facts which have been 

 published by Dr Gessner, Mr i awson, and Sir Charles 

 Lyell, regarding the coal-field of the adjoining province 

 of Nova Scotia. This coal-field, in its northern and 

 most productive part, extends about 100 miles from 

 Pictou on the eastern, to Cumberland Basin on the 

 western side of the province. It forms a narrow belt 

 of about ten miles in width ; and the productive 

 measures, where a section of the whole is seen on 

 Cumberland Basin, are only about 1000 feet in thick 

 ness. There are many seams of coal of various thick 

 nesses, nineteen being seen in the section I have referred 

 to. Now, the point of greatest economical importance 

 is this, that while at Pictou the most valuable known 

 bed has a thickness of about forty feet, the thickest at 

 the south Joggins on Cumberland Basin, where the 

 nineteen are all seen, is only four feet. If the field be 

 generally continuous, therefore, as it is supposed to be, 

 between the two extremes, the beds must thin off towards 

 the west, so that a bed which is forty feet at Pictou is 

 reduced to four feet at the Joggins. But this part of 



