10 Schouten Island. 



The inclination of the seam appears to be a little 

 greater at this level. Other openings have been made 

 and abandoned, and they are now filled up with 

 rubbish. 



There is a thin seam of hard earthy anthracite about 

 35 feet above the 6-feet seam of coal, overlaid with shale, 

 slaty clays, and soft carbonaceous sandstone. 



With regard to the probable amount of coal to be ob- 

 tained at the Schouten Island, I venture to give an opinion 

 with diffidence. The coal-seams partially show them- 

 selves variously disrupted and dislocated in the cliffs of 

 the sandstone skirting the south-west shore of the Island, 

 at a distance of about two miles from the old workings. 

 But the surface of the country is very broken, indicating 

 a disturbance in that direction so great, as to render 

 it unsafe to calculate with any degree of confidence with- 

 out actual sections by boring at different points in the 

 course of the crop. 



Assuming the superficial contents of the Island at 

 16 square miles, and that the coal originally extended 

 over the third part of it, — that part which I now state to be 

 occupied by greenstone, — and supposing that, after reject- 

 ing -Jgth of this for loss by denudation, &c., an area of 

 two-fifths (say two square miles) were found productive 

 of coal, of which it might be possible to mine out one- 

 fourth part, then about 3,000,000 tons would be realized 

 from a seam yielding four feet of coal. 



But this calculation hinges altogether upon the ques- 

 tion, whether coal may be found to extend at an avail- 

 able depth under the trappean rocks into the central 

 valley between the granite and greenstone hills. It will 

 be safer, therefore, to presume that the seam under notice 

 is continued with greater or less regularity to the point 

 where it is seen in broken and disjointed masses in the 

 cliffs on the south-west side of the Island, — a direct 



