“<7 
178 B. N. A. BOUNDARY COMMISSION. 



























applicable to most metallurgical processes, might be used in the form — 
of charcoal, or perhaps more profitably in gas furnaces after the pattern 
of those of Mr. Siemens; and, as settlement spreads westward, and these 
fuels are more in demand, many new methods will no doubt be found for 
their application. When they exist in the vicinity of land capable of 
agricultural settlement, they will be of great value, not only for domestic 
uses, but for the manufacture of bricks, tiles, and pottery, for which 
many of the enclosing clay and sand beds are very suitable. 
422. The St. Mary River coal, though unimportant in itself, from 
the thinness of the bed, is yet of great interest, as showing that there is 
aregion toward the base of the mountains on the forty-ninth parallel, 
where fuel, better in quality than any heretofore found in the interior 
continential region, may be looked for. It is highly probable that impor- 
tant seams of similar coal exist even near the Line; and I have heard of 
the occurrence of similar beds on the Belly River to the north. Some tra- 
ders, indeed, brought a sample of coal to one of the Depét Camps on the 
Line, which, being handed to the blacksmith, was, before I returned to the 
place entirely consumed ; it being found well suited to smithy work, and 
thus differing from the lignites. I was unable to visit the locality from 
which this specimen came, but was informed that it lay about fifty 
miles northward, at the junction of the Waterton and St. Mary Rivers, 
that the bed lay nearly flat, and that what appeared to be the same seam 
was found on both rivers, being about five feet thick on the former, and 
six on the 'atter. It would seem that the conditions of deposit, or ma- 
terials forming these coals and higher class lignites in the vicinity of the 
mountains, must have differed from those of the lignites further east. 
Metamorphism accompanying and caused by the folding of the formation, 
would probably convert a lignitetinto an auchraciie, without allowing it 
to pass through the intermediate condition of a bituminous coal ; and the 
bed last referred to, and others of somewhat similar quality elsewhere, 
are found in a nearly horizontal position. 
423. Four analyses of fuels obtained by the Rev. L. Taylor, and exa- 
mined by Prof. Haanel, of Victoria College, Coburg, have a very direct 
bearing on the question of the nature of the coals which may be expected 
to occur along the base of the mountains. The analyses appeared in the 
the Toronto Globe in February, 1874, and their results may be thus sum- 
marized :— 
