GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 179 



down eighty-five feet, ore averaging $35 per ton. Mine not in opera- 

 tion at present, as buildings and machinery are in course of erection. 

 The superintendent expects to take out fifteen tons per day. 



Young Canadian Mine — One-quarter of a mile west of the preceding. 

 Shaft sunk eighty feet through barren lode before reaching pay streak, 

 which was struck only two or three days before the min e was visited. The 

 ore had not been assayed, but was pronounced by all miners in the vicin- 

 ity to far exceed in richness any ore yet discovered in the neighborhood. 



THE COALS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.* 



The coals of the portion of our continent lying west of the Missouri 

 Biver are only just beginning to attract that attention which their im- 

 portance deserves. In the works heretofore published on the coal-fields 

 of the United States, they have been almost neglected, and even in 

 Dana's last compendious work on mineralogy, he disposes of them with 

 the remark that " tertiary coal occurs on the Cowlitz in Oregon and in 

 many places on the eastern slopes of the Eocky Mountains, where a' 

 1 lignite formation' is very widely distributed; but it is rarely in beds of 

 economical importance." In his enumeration of the coal-fields of the 

 United- States he mentions the Appalachian, the Illinois, the Eh ode 

 Island, and the Michigan basins. To the former two he accords an area 

 of one hundred and twenty thousand square miles; to the latter five 

 thousand square miles; while the area of the Ehode Island basin is left 

 out of the account altogether; the total coal area of the United States 

 being given as about one hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles. 

 But besides these four basins there are the Eastern and Middle Eocky 

 Mountain, the Monte Diablo, and the Oregon and Alaska beds to be 

 considered. Those beds which occur on the east flank of the Eocky 

 Mountains have been followed for five hundred miles and more, north and 

 south; and if it be true that these are "fragments of one great basin, 

 interrupted here and there by the upheaval of mountain chains, or con- 

 cealed by the deposition of newer formations,"! then their extension 

 east and west, or from the eastern range of the Eocky Mountains or 

 Black Hills to Weber Canon, where an excellent coal is mined, will fall 

 but little short of five hundred miles. Throughout this extent these beds 

 of coal are found between the upper cretaceous and lower tertiary, (or 

 in the transition beds of Hay den,) wherever these transition beds occur, 

 whether on the extreme flanks or in the valleys and parks between the 

 numerous mountain ranges. Assuming that the eroding agencies to- 

 gether have cut off one-half of the coal from this area, and taking one- 

 half of the remainder as their average longitudinal extent, we have over 

 fifty thousand square miles of coal-lands, accounting the latitudinal ex- 

 tent as only five hundred miles ; whereas we have no reason to believe 

 that it terminates within these bounds, but on the contrary good reason 

 for supposing that it extends northward far into Canada and south- 

 ward with the Cordilleras. All this territory has been omitted in the 

 estimate of the extent of our coal-fields. 



Classification of coals. 



The best classification of the coals is that of Professor Sogers in the 

 second volume of his report on the geology of Pennsylvania. 



* By Persifor Frazier, jr. 



t Hay den's Report on Geology of Colorado and New Mexico. 



