1846.] Geological, of a trip to Carbondale. 15 



we dashed with our reinless horse, the driver occasionally crack- 

 ing his whip " calm as a summer morning!" A keen young physi- 

 cian not long since, called upon to examine a fractured leg, in the 

 very essence of professional abstraction, dashed across this dizzy 

 bridge on a horse which had never before been on it! Near the 

 mine Doct. S. called my attention to a sharp rattle, which I at 

 once recognized as the angry warning of a rattlesnake — not dis- 

 tant probably fifteen feet from the railroad track! They are fre- 

 quent in the surrounding crags. Thus closely in our boutez en 

 avant country, does civilization — commercial enterprise, tread on 

 the kibes of savage life! The iron road and the rushino- car invade 

 the domain of the rattlesnake! 



I went through portions of the Powderly mine, with my com- 

 panions, and for the first time saw the process of excavating coal^ 

 With a light, straight, sharp steel pick-axe, and a rapid sidelong 

 stroke, the coal is detached — commencing at the bottom and work- 

 ing under and towards the roof Excavations are often made 

 several feet under at the bottom, so low that the miner lies flat on 

 his side, partly hidden by the overhanging coal, and in this posi- 

 tion plies his pick! The coal is then blasted with powder above, 

 and large masses are thrown down. Blasts took place within fifty 

 feet of us, in each of which a pound or more of powder was ex- 

 ploded, enveloping us in sulphureous smoke. The report and con- 

 cussion are but faint in those hollow subterranean caverns. Each 

 man, while at work, carries his light, a small tin oil lamp, with 

 a large wick, attached by a wire hook to the front part of his hat. 



From Powderly, we walked back to the Calamite mine, (as 

 Mr. Clarkson has agreed it shall be christened, instead of bearing 

 the unmeaning designation of New Shaft,) a mile nearer Carbon- 

 dale, and a little off the road over which we had passed. This 

 is chiefly remarkable as the locality of those calamites — the finest 

 in the United States — which are brought from Carbondale. A 

 ditch was dug through a bed of shale or sandstone, (it has es- 

 caped my memory which,) which disclosed an innumerable num- 

 ber of these fossil plants, in an uncompressed state, of all sizes 

 from the diameter of an inch up nearly to that of a foot, exhibiting 



