Geology of the Cheat and Greenbrier Mountains. 63 



feet below the surface, is eleven feet. These deposits continue to 

 be very abundant at Pittsburgh, the outlet of the valley, and spread 

 out laterally in a western direction, quite to the Ohio river, on whose 

 banks they appear at Steubenville, Wellsburgh and Wheeling, and 

 northerly, quite to the heads of the Susquehannah and Alleghany 

 rivers. 



Fifteen miles below Wheeling, the main surface deposit dips 

 under the bed of the river, and is seen no more in any considerable 

 quantity until it appears at Carr's run, nearly one hundred and 

 fifty miles below. The same deposit extends into Ohio, and is 

 found in great abundance about St. Clairsville, and the adjacent re- 

 gion. This deposit is at least two hundred miles in length and one 

 hundred in breadth, affording one of the most extensive coal fields 

 known in any part of the world. As we proceed northerly up the 

 streams, which rise in the elevated lands on the southern borders 

 of Lake Erie, the deposit of coal becomes thin and finally disap- 

 pears on the surface, but may, without doubt, be found at consider- 

 able depths, as some of the deep beds discovered in boring for salt 

 water, near Pittsburgh must extend a great distance northwestward- 

 ly. We are also strengthened in this opinion by the discharges 

 of petroleum and carburetted hydrogen gas, which are known to 

 issue from the earth in many places, not only near to, but immedi- 

 ately on the borders of the Lake. The following section and de- 

 scriptions of the coal deposits in the valley of the Monongahela, 

 and about Pittsburgh, furnished by the Rev. C. Elliot, who has 

 traversed the coal measures, and examined them minutely, for sev- 

 eral years, will more fully illustrate this interesting subject. 



In the following illustration of the coal deposits, the curved line 

 represents the river and the dark, right lines, the coal deposits, which 

 are numbered in the order of their superposition. The figures above 

 the curved lines denote the height of the several beds above the 

 river at different places, while those below denote the depth of the 

 two deposits underneath the river at Pittsburgh. The intervening 

 spaces between the lines are occupied by the different rock strata of 

 sandstone, limestone, slate shale, red and white marl, clays, Sec, 

 intermixed with nodules of iron ore : at Morgantown where the illus- 

 tration commences, the hills near the river are from three hundred 

 and fifty to four hundred and fifty feet in height. No less than four 

 distinct deposits of coal are found from the tops of the hills to the 

 bed of the river. No. L lies at an elevation of three hundred feet 



