Featherstonhaugh^s Geological Report. 



107 



mountain being perhaps nine hundred and fifty feet high, and 

 the fall to Cumberland from thence being about three hundred 

 and thirty feet. The veins at both places dip to the west. I 

 regretted at the time not having leisure to examine this sub- 

 ject more minutely with reference to the general continuity of 

 the veins. When the impediments* to the navigation shall at 

 some future period be overcome, there will be no part of the 

 world perhaps where coal can be mined and shipped with 

 greater facility than at the Savage mountain. The galleries 

 can be constructed in the broad face of day, and the coal let 

 down by drops to the boats below. I remember seeing this 

 admirable contrivance at Sunderlandj in England : the coal 

 being brought from the mines to the river at an elevation of 

 several hundred feet, one car at a time, laden with coal, was 

 carried out by machinery, and suspended over that part of 

 the river where the vessel lay ; it was then let down, with 

 the man accompanying it, within a moderate distance from the 

 open hatches ; the man then touching a spring, the bottom 

 of the car was let go and the coal dropped into the hold ; the 

 car was then hoisted up again, and another let down. 



Returning to Cumberland fi'om VVesternport, a distance of 

 twenty-eight miles, by the banks of the Potomac as far as it 

 was practicable, I had a fine opportunity of observing the river 

 sections in a part of the country remarkably wild and pictu- 

 resque, where the river occasionally wound its way through 

 very narrow mountainous gorges. Not far from Westernport, 

 on the left bank, there is another coal vein, of about twelve 

 feet, which I was told reappeared on the southern or Virginia 

 side, at nearly the same level, about three miles distant. The 

 termination of the coal field was soon marked by the reappear- 

 ance of anticlinal and contorted limstone beds alternating: 

 with shale. Sometimes the hills come down to the left bank 

 so abruptly as to make it necessary to cross to the Virginia 

 shore. At one place the mountain descends in an inclination 

 of seventy degrees to the river, and a bridle-path has been 



f In thirty-one miles the fall is three lumdreil and twenty-four feet. 



