Topography of the Kiskiminitas and Comiemaugh region. 71 



of Pittsburgh, but is of an Inferior quality to the coal of this vicinity. 

 Small traces of coal are also found near to Meadville, within a short 

 distance of Lake Erie ; it extends eastward to the Alleghany moun- 

 tains, quite to the waters of the Susquehannah river, rocks apparent- 

 ly of the transition class, being its boundary in that direction. At 

 the mouth of the Beaver, or Walhouding, the main coal deposit is 

 found at fifty feet above the bed of the river, and two miles above 

 Steubenville, it dips into the bed of the Ohio, where it is more 

 than six feet in thickness and of a very superior quality. At Wheel- 

 ing, the main coal bed is found at ninety feet above the river, from 

 which point it dips S. W. until it disappears beneath the water at 

 fifteen miles below, and is seen no more in considerable quantities 

 until we reach Carr's run one hundred and fifty miles below in Meigs 

 county, Ohio. 



Topography of the Kiskiminitas and Connemaugh region. 



The Kiskiminitas is a tributary stream of the Alleghany river ; 

 taking its rise in the ridges and valley of the Laurel and Chesnut 

 ridges of mountains, and uniting with the Alleghany, at a point thirty 

 miles above Pittsburgh. The Connemaugh is the continuation of 

 the Kiskiminitas, above the month of the Loyalhanna, a large 

 branch putting in from the south side, below the Chesnut ridge. In 

 the valley, between the Alleghany and Laurel mountains, the Con- 

 nemaugh divides into two large branches. The country through 

 Avhich these streams pass is hilly and broken, affording much fine 

 farming lands in the vallies between. The hills are from two hun- 

 dred to five hundred feet in height. The rock strata here departing 

 from their usual, nearly horizontal position, are influenced in their di- 

 rection by the outlines of the country and rise or dip in conformity 

 with the ridges of mountains and hills, in some instances at an angle 

 of nearly twenty degrees. This is the fact more especially at the 

 salines on the Kiskiminitas, eighteen miles from the foot of Chesnut 

 ridge ; at this spot, the ridge is two miles broad and five hundred feet 

 high, through which the river has cut a passage to the base of the 

 hills — the river here pursues a N. W. course. Near the upper well 

 at the foot of the ridge, a stratum of coal makes its appearance on 

 the margin of the river, and one mile and a half below, the same 

 bed is seen at an elevation of two hundred feet in the face of the 

 cliffs ; a few miles further down, it dips again into the bed of the 

 river, the superincumbent and inferior rock strata pursuing a con- 



