480 GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 
Colenso speaks of coal being found in Natal in abundance, and of the finest 
quality, but as yet too far from the sea coast, with the present means of land 
‘carriage, to make it worth while to transport it in large quantities. At a farm- 
house on the Tugela, the Bishop saw excellent bituminous coal, the produce of 
the colony, which cost nothing where it was found, but which sold for £5 the 
ton at Maritzburg, from the great expense of transit. In county Victoria, to 
the north of Durban, there is a place on the sea shore where a vein of coal crops 
out, and is quarried and used by the neighbouring sugar-planters. It is a sur- 
face coal, and, of course, the quality of a lower stratum would be, in all proba« 
bility, vastly superior. 
The Borneo and Labuan coal is chiefly absorbéd in China and Singapore. 
The Labuan coal is of excellent quality, and lies so near the sea that it can be 
carried on board ship from the pit’s mouth. There seems, however, of late 
years, to have been some stoppage in the company’s operations; for, while 5539 
tons of coal were sold from the mines there in 1856, the sales dropped to 1100 
tons in 1857, and in 1858 there were no sales at all. Whether this arose from 
want of labor, or from some other cause, we cannot learn. 
In New South Wales, the Australian Agricultural Company are in possession 
of a valuable coal field at the south entrance of Port Hunter. In 1836 the total 
amount of coals raised in the colony was but 12,646 tons, which had increased 
to 67,660 tons in 1851, and 216,397 tons, of the value of |£162,182, in 1858. 
This quantity was obtained from nineteen coal mines. The high price of labor 
has somewhat stayed the progress of colliery operations. The whole area of 
this great Australian coal field cannot be less than 16,000 square miles; much 
of this is situated at too great a depth for profitable working, but at Newcastle, 
and on Hunter River, it crops out to the surface in seams of from four to ten 
feet in thickness. The Rev. W. B. Clarke, a geologist of repute, states that 
from his own surveys and actual knowledge, as compared with its gold fields, 
the carboniferous portion of New South Wales is of infinitely greater value. It 
has been said of North America that “no part of the known world offers so 
great a development of carboniferous rocks;” but Australia presents a close 
parallel with that rich coal-bearing region, and there are enormous areas of tens 
of thousands of square miles occupied by these carboniferous ore heds in New 
South Wales and Queen’s Land. Several workable and valuable coal seams . 
exist on the Bremer and Brisbane Rivers, and along the shores of Moreton Bay. 
On the Brisbane River steamers can load by lying literally at the mouth of the 
mines, as is the case at Lake Macquane; this phenomenon is characteristic of 
the coal of New South Wales. In the colony of Victoria veins of coal of supe- 
rior description have been found in many localities—Western Port, Gipps Land, 
Moonlighthead Coast, and other places. There is also a field extending from 
the Barrabool Hills to Cape Otway, which presents many characteristics similar 
to that of Western Port. In both those fields the only seams of coal of work- 
able thickness have been found on the sea shore between low and high-water 
mark. The place where the coal crops out, on the Cape Otway shore, is within 
four miles of Loutit Bay; and in respect of proximity of harbour has the ad- 
vantage over the Western Port field. Coal has also been discovered at Cape 
