CAHABA COAL FIELD: EUREKA BASIN. 71 
[Wadsworth seam in 8. W. 14 of N. E. 14, in section 20, township 20, S., 
range 3, W : rate of dip 38°]. 
SLATY  SANOSTONE 
N 2FEET GRITTY SLATE 
N 
GFEET RINCHES COAL 
Bo7z7own SLATE 
For the relative position of the seams of this basin, see 
the South and North Vertical Section and the Helena Hovri- 
zontal Section from “I” to “J” on the accompanying map. 
The only method of working the seams of this basin 
hitherto practised, has been the method largely used in 
Pennsylvania of working the coal ‘‘on the run,” that is, by 
driving the slope down in the direction of the dip, then 
driving the gangways horizontally from it, working the 
rooms up the rise at right angles from the gangways, allow- 
ing the coal to run down the room of shutes by its own 
gravity into the mine cars, a method well suited to all our 
seams that have a rate of dip of over 40°: (instead of a 
slope, a drift or vertical shaft can be used.) (a). 
(a) Thirty years ago the writer worked a seam near Montevallo, 
having a rate of dip of 65° by the same method, and found it suited 
that rate of dip the very best, but owing to the very steep dip I was 
compelled to have the miners keep their shutes full up to their ‘‘room 
breasts”’ to prevent the pulverization of the coal by flinging it violently 
down an empty or partly empty shute; the coal was loaded in the mine 
cars at the bottom sufficiently fast, to give the miners working room at 
the top of the room shute; the run of the coal was checked by curving 
the bottom of the shute a little, and by using short poles or planks 
whenever the mine car was full. Very little shovelling was necessary 
to load the mine cars; part of the room was posted off and lagged for 
the slate gob; sometimes the coal would scaffold or lodge a consider- 
able distance up the shute, but a sbot gun loaded with large buckshot 
and fired up the shute woulda loosen it, it being entirely too dangerous 
for a man to ascend the shute to loosen it, 
