244 THE CANADIAN NATURAM8T. [Vol. vil. 



of the river of tin; same n;nue, in his account of his vcy.ijrcs of 

 discovery prosccuti'(l durini; the years 1781) to 1793, says that 

 alonfj; the eastern side of the niotintains there exists " a narrow 

 strip of very iiiarsiiy, bo<:;i2;y, and uneven f^round, the outer edp^e 

 of whicii produces coal , I lid bitumen ; these I saw on the banks 

 of the Mackenzie River, as far north as Lnt. (id'-'. I also dis- 

 covered them in my second journey at tiie conimonce'^ent of the 

 Jlocky Mountains, in .50"^ N. liat. ; 120 W. Lons. ; and the 

 same was observed by Mr. Fiddler, one of the servants of the 

 II. B. Company, at the source of the South biaiieii of the Sas- 

 katchewan, in about I^at. 52; Loim. 1 12^ HO." lie also de- 

 scribes near the Peace River, " several chasms in the e irth which 

 emitted heat and smoke which diffused a stroni^ suljiliurous 

 stanch,"' — probably a case of the spontaneous combustion of a lig- 

 nite bod comp.ir ible with those observed in other localities. Sir 

 John Franklin i.i his second journey to the Polar Sea, noticed 

 what he calls biuls of liiiuite or tertiary pitch-coal at Garry's 

 Island, oif the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and al.-^o an ex- 

 tensive deposit near the Rabba:^e River, on tlie coast of the 

 Arctic Sea, opposite the termination of the Richardson chain of 

 the Rocky Mountains. Sir J. Richardson, who accompanied 

 Franklin in the expedition just referred ti», was one of those 

 en<>'a<J"ed in the search for him in subsequent years, and mentions 

 in his account of a boat voyaj^e on the Mackenzie and iu the 

 vicinity of Great Bear River, a species of coal which when re- 

 cently extracted is massive but shows woody structure, the beds 

 appearing to be made up of pretty large trunks, the fibre of 

 which is contorted. He says that when this coal is exposed a 

 short time to air it splits into rliomboidal fragments, which again 

 separate into thin layers, and much of it eventually falls into a 

 coarse powder. When exposed to moist air, it takes fire and 

 burns with a fetid smell, but with little smoke or flame. Some 

 varieties resemble charcoal, and others are conchoidal likecannel 

 coal. Amber is also noticed to occur, and the beds of coal are 

 ofteu destroyed as exposed by their spontaneous inflammability. 

 This description and the account given of the associated clays 

 and shales might almost as well apply to some localities in the 

 ssouthern part of British Americ i or to the lignite tertiary for- 

 mation of the Missouri River. 



In the United States the first observers of this formation ap- 

 pear to have been Lewis and Clarke, who, in the narrative of 



