302 MINERAL RESOURCES OF UNITED STATES. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



General Remarks. — Coal. — Rhode Island Coal fields. — Massa- 

 chusetts Coal-fields. — Mansfield. — Anthracite Coal-fields of 

 Pennsylvania. — Amount Produced and Consumed since the 

 Mines first opened. — Bituminous Coal fields of Pennsylvania, 

 — Coal-fields of Maryland— Of Virginia — Of Ohio— Kentucky 

 — Tennessee. — Other Coal Measures of the United States. 



The mineral resources of the United States but 

 just begin to be appreciated. Hitherto we have 

 been contented to cultivate the soil, and seek our 

 iron, and coal, and copper, and lead, and other miner- 

 al substances, from foreign countries; but the time 

 has at length arrived when the increasing wants of 

 our rapidly multiplying population compel us to 

 look for these materials nearer home. We shall 

 endeavour, then, to give, in as short a compass as 

 possible, an account of these resources,^ and, by 

 statistical facts, show with what astonishing-rapidity 

 they are being developed. 



Coal. 



The coal strata have been observed as far north 

 on this continent as human discovery has yet pen- 

 etrated. At Melville Island, in latitude 75°, where 

 the summer lasts but a few weeks, Captain Parry 

 found in the coal formation an abundance of im- 

 pressions and casts of plants which bore a tropical 

 aspect ; and in Spitzbergen, which is still nearer the 

 North Pole, there is also an extensive coal deposite 

 with the same remains of fossil vegetables. 



As we come down the coast, the first coal-beds 

 which we come to that are worked to any extent 



