86 TAYLOR'S GEOLOGICAL RECONNOISSANCE. 



veins yielded at least $3 to $4 per day to each hand. The mines of Palenque are 

 not inferior to these ; and, under scientific and even ordinary management, they 

 cannot fail to yield a very profitable result. 



Close to the sea shore, at P. Escribanos and at a position four or five miles 

 to the eastward, also on the sea level, the gold veins are reputed to pay very 

 handsomely. 



The writer is not aware that modern geological examinations have been carried .so 

 far along the coast, as Boca del Toro. The magnificent bay and harbor of the 

 Lnguna de Chiriqui, is fifty miles long and fifteen miles broad. Excellent 

 bituminous coal, apparently newer than the new coal formation, and yet, I suspect, 

 older than the tertiary or brown coal of the Germans, extends in a considerable 

 breadth from the interior, along the coast. Fragments of this coal, of which the 

 engineers of the steam vessels speak in high terms, are brought down the various 

 streams which empty themselves into the Chirique Bay. There appears to be good 

 reason for concluding that this fine bituminous coal formation stretches entirely 

 across the Isthmus, and is the same as that which occupies the island of Muerio, not 

 far from Panama on the Pacific coast. A quality of coal, of remarkably similar 

 character, has been lately discovered in North Carolina, and is now under 

 examination. 



It is unlikely that in the seas which border the Isthmus, on either side, where 

 mineral fuel is so great a desideratum, and has heretofore been thought to be 

 inaccessible, or altogether absent, such valuable depositories of coal should be 

 allowed much longer to remain either inaccessible or unappropriated. Accordingly, 

 we hear of associations in the eastern cities, for securing and working this coal. 

 These parties are independent of the companies which have lately been organised, 

 for securing mining privileges for working the gold veins of the region under 

 present consideration. Cheap fuel, for the service of the ordinary coasting and 

 commercial steamers, on both sides of the Isthmus, is a great desideratum, where the 

 expense of coal from the United States, cannot fail to form a heavy charge on 

 transportation. The European coal, for the same destination, is of course attended 

 with still greater expense; and at the moment of penning this article, we see an 

 announcement in the journals, that a vessel freighted with Welsh coal for San 

 Francisco, has been lost in the Straits of Magellan. 



With a coal abounding on the shores of the Pacific and the Caribbean .seas, 

 containing seventy-four per cent, of carbon, its adaptation to the ordinary purposes 

 of steam navigation, although unequal to the bituminous anthracite of South Wales, 

 or to the highly carboniferous anthracite of Luzerne county and Lackwanna, in 

 Pennsylvania, cannot but prove of singular importance, in relation to the mercantile 

 facilities which are involved in the vast and rapidly increasing commerce of the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



