82 Wheeling Coal Strata. 



skilfully in the direction of the natural layers. This bed furnishes 

 coal for the town of Wheeling and its numerous manufactures ; and 

 stretching along the face of the river hill for fourteen or fifteen miles 

 below, it gradually dips under the bed of the river. It- is dug in 

 vast quantities, passed immediately down rail ways or slides from 

 the mouth of the mine, into large flat bottomed boats, carrying from 

 three to five thousand bushels, and sold at various places on the river 

 below. The price, when delivered in the boats, is only three cents 

 per bushel. The hills have been pierced in many places, for sev- 

 eral hundred yards. The roof is usually supported by pillars of 

 coal, four or five feet square, at intervals of six or eight feet, ac- 

 cording to the strength of the roof. If the roof is very fragile, 

 planks and puncheons are used for support, especially about the 

 mouth of the mine, where the weather has access to the rock. In 

 some parts of the deposit, considerable quantities of the brown sul- 

 phuret of iron, or " copperas stone," are found : large quantities of 

 copperas are made at Wheeling from the products of this bed. 

 Fossil wood is found in this deposit ; a fragment of a branch, or 

 root, nearly three inches in diameter and eighteen inches in length, 

 is now in my collection. It contains a large share of iroij and some 

 silicious matter. The surface is striated longitudinally. To what 

 species of tree it belonged it is difficult to determine. From the 

 quality of the coal and the thickness of the deposit, there is every 

 reason to conclude it is a continuation of bed No. 3, found at Mor- 

 gantown and Pittsburgh. Four miles west of Wheeling, in Ohio, the 

 same stratum of coal appears by the side of the "national road," 

 as it leaves Indian Wheehng creek, to ascend the hills. The 

 coal was brought to light in grading the road, while digging away 

 the e^rth that had shpped down from the sides of the hill and cov- 

 ered the deposit. It is more than six feet in thickness, at an eleva- 

 tion somewhat greater than that on the east side of the river. The 

 coal is remarkably fine, and extensively worked for transportation^ 

 down the river. When the water is high, boats ascend to the beds 

 and load there ; at other times, they load in the mouth of the creek. 

 It has been worked for several hundred feet under the hill, and is 

 one of the most valuable in this vicinity. The rock strata, here, 

 have a dip of about one degree S. W., and this bed sinks beneath 

 the river, near " Pipe creek," fourteen miles below. Coal is abund- 

 ant in the hills of Belmont and Jefferson counties, but whether from 

 the same deposit has not been ascertained. 



