194 
COAL PITS. 
plate of the geological views in China. The surfaces of manv of 
these rocks could not have appeared more bare, even, and perpen- 
dicular, had they been formed by the hand of art. 
The vegetation on the surface of the hills least decomposed some- 
times consisted of a species of Lycopodium resembling a tree in 
miniature. An exaggerated figure is given of this plant in number 
two hundred and thirty-eight of the botanical drawings in the India 
House. The head is not so thick as is there represented, but is more 
umbrella-shaped, and spreading. 
A few miles before we reached Chaou-chou-foo the banks of the 
river became lower, and resumed the red colour arising from disinte- 
grated red sandstone, and were in some places of a blackish hue. This 
last circumstance arose from a quantity of coal which we here found 
rising through the surface. Some pits* of coal had been met with by 
some of the Embassy soon after leaving the Po-yang lake, but I 
had not been well enough to examine them. However, 1 received 
sufficient evidences of coal being abundant in the empire, and of 
various qualities, in the large supplies of it furnished to our boats, 
and exposed for sale in different cities that we visited. f- The coal 
which I saw in the province of Pe-tche-lee was a species of graphite ; 
that brought to me from the towns on the Yang-tse-kiang, resembled 
cannel coal ; that observed after passing the Po-yang lake had the 
characters of kovey coal ; that now met with, contained much 
sulphur. 
The last-mentioned coal was used in the manufacture of sulphate of 
iron, in the neighbourhood of Chaou-chou-foo. The following pro- 
* “ Foo-hoo-tang appearing an insignificant village, we took a short walk into the 
country, where we met with some pits of coal that had been sunk like wells ; the fragments 
at the bottom of the hill where they were situated appeared pure slate.” — Ellis’s Embassy, 
vol. ii. p. 107 . 
f “ The Missionaries inform us that coal mines are so abundant in every province of 
China, that there is, perhaps, no country of the world in which they are so common.” 
See Grosier’s Account of China, vol. i. p. 402. 
