238 Notices of Coal in China. 
Chinese miners are extremely poor and rude mountaineers ; it 
is said they often relieve hunger by eating coal, and if it be trae, 
as has been represented, that pigs fatten on this mineral in some 
western countries, this report respecting Chinese miners is not 
incredible. For the most part, the mines are worked in horizon- 
tal shafts, though pits are sometimes dug. At one period, pow- 
dered coal was mixed with flour and the juice of dates, and 
burned in chafing-dishes for producing a fragrant ined ’ Fo 
such _pastils, charcoal has been substituted. This mineral, the 
source of so much wealth and power in the West, does not ap- 
pear to have been known to Europe more than ‘three hundred 
years, but Chinese antiquarians refer its use to a remote period in 
their history. Its utility in the arts has been appreciated at Peking 
for more than a thousand years, as may be inferred from the en- 
comiums bestowed upon it by a poet of the Sung dynasty, who 
lauds it as useful in the manufacture of iron implements. A 
writer in the early part of the seventh century mentions the arti- 
cle. The earliest notice of coal is in the history of the Han 
dynasty, B. C. 202 to A. D. 25, where the remark occurs that 
Kiangsi produced stones, which were used as fuel. 
To appreciate rightly the value of these vast coal deposits, ex- 
tending from Corea to Siam, regard must be had to the increas- 
ing commerce of the Pacific, to the revolution which seems on 
the eve of taking place in the route of communication with west- 
ern nations, and to the prospective greatness of the Anglo-Saxon 
‘ states springing into existence on its eastern shores. Of their ca- 
pacity, aided with the appliances of foreign skill and capital to 
supply all demands which the steam-engine may make upon them, 
both for manufactures and navigation, there can exist no doubt. 
Nor have these primeval forests been stored upon the continent 
alone; they abound in more accessible situations, isolated, as it 
were expressly for steam navigation, in the islands of Japan, For- 
mosa, and Borneo. Before the application of steam and coal to 
navigation, a skeptical philosophy might have questioned the 
utility of deposits of this mineral in the torrid zone, and imme- 
diately under the equator; but the design of the Omniscient 
Artificer of this beautiful sphere is now obvious, affording another 
evidence that He left nothing to fortuitous circumstances : it is 
another lesson fraught with instruction for reflective minds. May 
the name of the immense sheet of water, on whose shores Infinite 
Beneficence has scattered this mineral, eetions the peaceful pur- 
poses of all who traverse it, that both elements may contribute 
to the diffusion of commerce and civilization in fusing hostile 
races into a common brotherhood ! 
Ningpo, February Ist, 1850. 
