Valley of Lackawanna and of Wyoming. 319 



Communications. — Carbondale. 



When the communication, by the canals and rail way of the Hud- 

 son and Delaware company, shall be fully adapted to the convenience of 

 travellers,* they will begin to pass from the Hudson to the Delaware, 

 and then to the head of the Lackawanna valley. The canals and 

 rail way and steam engines, for conveying the coal, will form a very 

 gratifying subject of observation, and the sight of the great mine at 

 Carbondale, is alone worth the journey. Here the thriving village 

 of Carbondale, and the suburb of New Dublin, containing the labor- 

 ers employed about the mine, have arisen within a very short period. 



The mine is situated in the front of a hill ; it is quarried, in a contin- 

 ued line, for sixty rods, and presents a front of good coal of twenty 

 feet in thickness, besides several feet more of roof coal, stained and 

 shattered by time and the weather. Great as have been the expendi- 

 tures of the company, if any mining object can justify them, it must be 

 such a deposit of coal. This mine and other mines in the vicinity — 

 as for instance the rich bed of Thomas Meredith, Esq. and the vari- 

 ous other beds already opened in the Lackawanna valley, leave no room 

 to doubt, that the coal is inexhaustible. Several stationary steam en- 

 gines draw up the coal in waggons, on a rail way from the mine, to 

 the summit level, whence it descends to the canal. The entire rail 

 way is sixteen miles long, and the canal along the Laxawaxen thirty 

 more. From this canal it crosses the Delaware, and proceeds by an- 

 other canal to the Hudson, sixty seven miles to the vicinity of Kingston. 



Last year there was much inconvenience from the breaking of the 

 chains by which the fixed steam engines draw up the coal waggons 

 from the mine ; during the season, about fifty waggons were dashed to 

 pieces in that manner, and when the chains parted, the waggon could 

 not be seen in its descent ; so instantaneously did it dart to its goal, 

 that only a dim streak could be traced through the air. They now 

 use cables of hemp, and the accidents do not any longer occur. 



The establishment at Carbondale, Is only the opening of the great 

 valley of the Lackawanna, and of Wyoming. The Hudson and 

 Delaware company, will now convey coal from the other mines, for 

 a rate which may not nnprobably be hereafter reduced ; so that much 

 of the coal of the valley may find its outlet in this way ; and other 

 communications to the Delaware, the Hudson, and to the northern 

 part of New York are in contemplation. 



* Which will soon be done. 



