Schouten Island. ] 1 



distance which I have roundly computed at two miles,— 

 and that it may be found practicable to push works under- 

 ground half the distance, realizing 4 feet of coal along- 

 one mile at least through a breast of 500 feet or there- 

 abouts. 



This would give a product of 10,560,000 cubic feet, 

 which, deducting one-fourth for loss in various ways, 

 would yield, at 20 feet to the ton, nearly 400,000 tons of 

 coal, and this by working to the crop only. 



It is obvious that by working to the dip of the seam, 

 and using powerful and expensive steam machinery, a 

 much larger additional quantity might be obtained. 



The great thickness of this seam of coal, and its 

 isolated position upon the corner of a small Island, claim 

 for it the relation of a very small part of a large basin to 

 its whole. 



It seems more than probable that the expanse of 

 waters in Oyster Bay occupy the place of a system of coal, 

 shale, and soft sandstones, which once constituted a large 

 coal field, of which one small remnant presents itself on 

 Schouten Island, and others at or near Little Swanport 

 and Rocky Hills, and at intervals along the base of the 

 hills at the extremity of Great Swanport. 



Prosecuting this view of the subject, I traversed in 

 various directions the Schouten peninsula and main-land 

 as far as the head of Moulting Bay, near the mouth of 

 the Apsley River, and then crossed towards the Douglas 

 River. 



On the Schouten peninsula in Geographe Strait, 

 immediately opposite to the coal-mines on the Schouten 

 Island, there is a nook in which the carbonaceous, 

 schistose, and clayey sandstones with vegetable impres- 

 sions, which accompany the Schouten seams, crop out ; 

 but the strata are concealed on every side but one by 

 masses of trap rocks, and almost immediately phmge 



