Lesley.] 1 28 ‘ [June, 
by the collation of these three generalizations, that the first knowledge 
of the true order of the American Coal Measures was obtained, a starting 
point and a basis for all the Western Surveys. 
It was merely a sketch, however; done hastily, in a single season, and 
with most inadequate means at our command. In pecuniary power the 
party fell so low that one of our camps on the North Fork could not be { 
moved, because the whole party could not raise, amongst them all, 374 
cents to pay a farmer’s bill for potatoes. A messenger was dispatched to 
Hanna’s at the Turkey-foot, now Confluence, with a faint hope of receiy- 
ing from the Chief in Philadelphia a remittance. Happily a letter was 
lying in the Post office which relieved our embarrassments. 
Every subsequent private survey has revealed both the general accuracy 
and the special inaccuracies of the summary statement of the Fifth 
Annual Report; and there is work for competent local geologists for a 
long time to come, tracing the principal members of the column, observ- 
ing their variations, intercalating the more insignificant deposits, and 
discovering their sudden, and local, and valuable expansions. We know 
but little yet of the true nature of the genetic relationships of coal, car- 
bonate of lime, and carbonate of iron. But we know that they bold some 
curiously fixed relationships of the highest economical importance. 
Every special survey, therefore, should be published, in the hope of taking 
another step towards a complete understanding of that subject. 
It is with this view that I append a special description of a property 
recently surveyed, stretching for five miles along the North Fork of the 
Youghiogheny. The North Fork is the Laurel Hill Creek of the Fifth 
Annual Report. Its mouth and that of Castleman’s river makes the 
Turkey Foot at Confluence. Ursina is a new village one mile up the 
Fork. The new Baltimore and Pittsburgh Railway is constructed up the 
south side of the Fork past Ursina, where its grade is.90 feet above water 
level. It then passes (by a tunnel) through the hills, and continues its 
course eastward up the North bank of Castleman’s River. Ursina is 86 
miles by railroad from Pittsburgh, and 248 from Baltimore. here are 
6436 acres in this property, and its greatest width of two miles carries it 
across the centre of the Coal Basin so as to include both dips; which, 
however, are very gentle, nowhere exceeding 5° and seldom as high as 19, 
There is also a gentle lowering of the central belt or axis of the basin 
southwestward towards the Turkey foot, which has determined its strik- 
ingly romantic topography. The hills of nearly horizontal coal measures 
are 300 to 400 feet high, and the coal beds, etc., pass through them from 
valley to valley cropping out in nearly horizontal lines along their sides 
and around their ends. Easier conditions for mining cannot be imagined. 
And it is in a country quite destitute of faults. . 
The coal beds belong to the upper part of the Lower Coal System. 
