502 G. A. Lehour, and W. Mundle — Coal in Chile. 



mi 



s ^ 



O cl 



a I 



o 



But although beds agreeing in cha- 

 racter, composition, and organic re- 

 mains, and almost invariably ligniti- 

 ferous, are thus found skirting the 

 coast for so great a distance, they are 

 by no means really continuous. The 

 breaks which divide the localities from 

 each other are often of considerable 

 length, and, even where they are 

 shortest, bring about a complete change 

 in the arrangements of the deposits 

 on either side. The probable cause 

 of this we shall hint at farther on. 

 At present it will be sufficient to note 

 that the ridges of micaceous schists 

 which separate the little coal-fields 

 from each other, and the contour lines 

 of which were the coast-lines during 

 the deposition of the lignitiferous form- 

 ation, are in every, case distinct lines 

 of demarcation, to the north and south 

 of which the vertical sections, though 

 cutting through rocks of undoubted 

 contemporaneous age, are yet veiy 

 different from each other, both in the 

 position and thickness of their con- 

 stituent beds. 



This will at once be evident by 

 glancing at the accompanying sections, 

 the first of which is taken from a line 

 of pits sunk in the Coronel workings, 

 and is separated from the other (mea- 

 sured at Lota) by a ridge of micaceous 

 schists, advancing from the interior 

 into the sea ; the distance between 

 the two being "only five miles, and 

 the strata cut through by both being, 

 without doubt, equivalent as far as 

 geological age is concerned. 



The coal-seams, it will be ob- 

 served, are even less constant than 

 the other members of the above 

 sections. 



Keeping then this arrangement of 

 the beds in mind, we cannot be 

 unprepared for the great dissimilar- 

 ity which we find existing in the 

 various accounts, both official and 

 unofficial, of the capabilities of the 



