COAL SYSTEM. 
297 
and extends along the southern boundary of New-York, and thence south and southwest into 
Alabama, a distance of sixteen hundred miles, with an average breadth of at least fifty miles, 
and perhaps one hundred miles.* 
Within this great coal formation, the largest in the known world of which the boundaries 
have been explored, it is supposed that there are from fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand 
square miles of workable and easily accessible coal, in beds three feet thick and over, giving an 
average thickness of workable coal twenty feet thick. Taking the lowest of these estimates 
as the basis of calculation, it will yield 32,234yVo cubic yards per acre; or 20,630,016 
yards per square mile ; or 1,031,500,800,000 cubic yards for fifty thousand square miles; 
and as a cubic yard weighs about a ton or rather more, it may be stated as so many tons. 
This quantity would give more than three tons annually to each individual of the present 
population of the United States for twenty thousand years, a quantity sufficient not only for 
domestic use, but for all purposes of machinery and working the metals, etc. The above 
quantity, also, if put in mass, would form a square pyramidal mountain with a base ten miles 
square, and thirty thousand feet high; or a range of mountains two miles through the base, 
twenty-five hundred feet high, and nearly two hundred miles long.t 
When it is remembered that this is only one of several great coal formations in North Ame¬ 
rica, one at least of which is supposed to be of equal extent with this, while there are seve¬ 
ral small ones, (but which compare with the largest of those of Europe,) we see what a won¬ 
derfully bounteous provision has'been made by our Creator for the comfort, happiness and 
prosperity of his creatures in this, as one of the elements of social and domestic enjoyment, 
of individual and national wealth.J 
Extensive derangements of the strata of the coal system have taken place since their de¬ 
position ; but while in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, &c., mountain chains have been 
elevated, and various wrinklings of these and the subjacent strata have caused long mountain 
chains and valleys; in New-York, only the subjacent strata have been affected on the pro¬ 
longation of those anticlinal and synclinal axes, and where they were not covered by the car¬ 
boniferous system. These derangements of the strata will be mentioned when we treat of 
the strata that have been aflfected by them in New-York, and they will be referred to their 
relative epochs, as near as can be ascertained from the facts thus far obtained. 
* Small portions of this coal formation are drained by some of the branches of the Delaware and Susquehannah in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, the Cuyahoga in Ohio, and the Alabama river in Alabama. 
+ The coal of this formation now finds a market in the State of New-York, through the Ohio canal and Lake Erie to Buffalo, 
and along the Erie canal; from Pennsylvania, through the Genesee Valley canal, Chemung canal, the Chenango canal, the De¬ 
laware and Hudson canal, and the Morris canal; to the Middle States, through the various canals in Pennsylvania, the Chesa¬ 
peake and Ohio canal; and to the Western and Southwestern States, through the Allegany, Monongahela, Ohio, Kenawha, 
Sandy, Leckinep, Kentucky, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. Vast quantities are already used for manufacturing opera¬ 
tions, for steamboats, and for fuel, but the use has only commenced. 
t Associated with these coal strata are others of limestone, ironstone, fire-clay and fire-stone, with various qualities of sand¬ 
stone, clay, etc., all of which are calculated to be made elements of inexhaustible sources of industry, production and wealth, 
m the manufacture of iron, glass, pottery, etc. The beds of iron ore associated with the lower coal beds will probably yield on 
an average 10,000 tons of iron per acre, or 6,400,000 per mile, or 320,000,000,000 of tons from this formation. 
Geol. 1st Dist. 38 
