76 Foreign Notices : — North America. 



occasionally offered for sale. I ought to mention that an English gentle- 

 man^ our principal proprietor here, possesses a garden equal to those at- 

 tached to most seats in England, and as well attended to. Of the melon 

 tribe, and similar plants, he rears an immense quantity for himself and 

 friends, commencing in frames, as upon the English method, to guard 

 against the later spring frosts. 



From my preceding letters you have no doubt derived some information 

 as to the geological position of this district. We are just within the verge 

 of what is probably by far the most extensive coal formation in the world; 

 the qualities of which coal are as yet scarcely known on the eastern coast 

 and in the great cities. It is highly bituminous ; more so, I conceive, from 

 the experiments I have tried, than even the Northumberland coal; cer- 

 tainly much more so than the best Welsh coal. From it I have produced 

 tar and coke of superior quality. Neither of these manufactured sub- 

 stances are known to the Americans. The tar of this country is produced 

 from wood, like the Swedish, and the small quantity of coal tar consumed 

 is imported from England, at a very high price. These circumstances, and 

 the demand for similar articles hereabouts, have encouraged me to com- 

 mence the manufactory of them ; and I have purchased a convenient site 

 for the undertaking, half a mile from my residence, and adjoining our turn- 

 pike road to Erie. The vein I am now working is i\ ft. thick, of suitable 

 quality for my purpose, and of itself will furnish a large extra-supply for 

 sale. I have traced at least four or five other veins also in the same 

 locality, which will yield me more than I can require or raise for the rest 

 of my life. There is, beneath the coal, an extensive bed of fire clay, adapted 

 to make the best quality of fire bricks, such as are now imported into the 

 principal American sea-ports, from England, and sold wholesale at 32 to 

 35 dollars per thousand. I hope at last that I shall bring my geological 

 propensities to account ; that they have been useful to me in the choice 

 of this spot I at any rate have some satisfaction in believing. I turned to 

 your JZncyclopcedia of Agriculture, to find something about coal, coke, and 

 coal tar, and the apparatus requisite : but little is introduced on these points 

 on the first, and nothing on the others ; probably because you considered 

 the subjects rather too remote from the other improvements of landed pro- 

 perty, and not altogether belonging to an agricultural work. The great 

 receptacle for iron ore, and the site of its conversion into pig-iron, is imme- 

 diately east from this, a few miles over the Alleghany ridge. Thence it is 

 brought hither and to various forges, to be converted into bars or manu- 

 factured into various forms, or conveyed 150 miles farther west, as far as 

 Pittsburg, increasing in value at every mile. The ore is of the haematitic 

 kind, very rich, and the iron it yields is equal to the best Swedish. Char- 

 coal alone is employed in its production and conversion. The quantity of 

 wood consumed in converting a ton of iron is prodigious, and occasions a 

 great destruction and consumption of timber : so much is this already felt, 

 that even in this region of forests we hear and wonder about wood for 

 charcoal becoming scarce and expensive in the neighbourhood of all the 

 great iron-works. Sooner or later the English method of employing coke 

 from coal must be adopted, which will then occasion a material reduction in 

 the cost of producing iron, and consequently effect another great advantage, 

 by encouraging the native manufactures of the United States. We have at 

 this village an extensive manufactory of screws, which far excel in work- 

 manship any I ever saw in England. Of course those who are interested 

 in American manufactures are anxious for all the protection against foreign 

 competition and importation that our government can enforce. The tariff 

 regulations have afforded a vast field for political discussions and disputes, 

 which will perhaps terminate in the separation from the Union of one or 

 two of the Southern States. Under all circumstances, I am decidedly of 

 opinion that the true American policy is just that which she has been 



