EXPLOEATIOIsr FOR COAL. 85 



in one ca,r. The i-'oofs of the seam were admirably strong, requiring practi- 

 cally no timbering even where the pillars were robbed to a very extreme 

 point At the time 1 last examined the place the best information which 

 could be had indicated that the cost of lifting the coal and treating it at the 

 breaker amounted to about S2.50 a ton. An estimate based on a suitable 

 amount of surface plant and proper approaches to the vein, with a fit admin- 

 istration, indicated that at the present price of labor the coal could be mined, 

 so long as the bed was in the then existing favorable position, for about one- 

 half the sum it was then costing. If the coal is found as a little-distorted 

 bed, averaging say 4 feet thick over as much as 3 square miles in the cen- 

 tral part of the basin, it should by means of vertical shafts be possible to 

 mine it at a yet lower cost than that named. 



CONDITIONS OF FUTURE ECONOMIC WORK. 



As to the best places for future exploration, it may be said that it 

 seems to be undesirable to undertake any further search for the coal at the 

 outcrops, the presumption and the evidence being alike in favor of the 

 opinion that at such places the coal, lying at a steep dip, is more likely to 

 be much infiltered with vein matter. The aim should be to seek the beds 

 in the central parts of the synclines, or where, though monoclinal, the strata 

 have a low dip. 



The best of these places appears to be that in the northern part of Aquid- 

 neck Island. If the apparent diminution in the slope of the strata toward 

 the center of this trough be verified, there is a reason, before remarked, to 

 expect a considerable area of the coal beds in the central part of the noi1;h- 

 ern end of the island, where the rocks seem a little disturbed. There is no 

 very clear evidence as to the depth below the surface at which the coal may 

 lie, but it seems quite probable that this depth is less than 1^800 feet in the 

 central portion of the area. To determine the true position of the deposits, 

 a line of borings should be carried across this part of Aquidneck Island in 

 a nearly east-west direction, with its western end about 600 feet from the 

 vertical plane where the old workings stopped. It will be well to supple- 

 ment the information thus gained, especially if the indications so obtained 

 are favorable, by other borings carried southward toward Quaker Hill. 



The next most promising field for exploration is the belt of countr}^- 

 lying immediately to the east of the northward extension of the Providence 



