collier.] NULATO PROVINCE, BUSH MINE. 58 
development consisted of a tunnel about 30 feet long driven into this 
slide. 
The coal is contained in sandstones carrying fossil leaves determined 
as Upper Cretaceous. The coal was broken and very much weathered, 
so that it was difficult to obtain any large pieces which did not crum- 
ble to line dirt on exposure to the air. It was impossible to determine 
the thickness of the bed, although the crushed material was often over 
4 feet in thickness. A sample of the coal from the end of the tunnel 
yielded the following analysis: 
Analysis of coal (sample No. £54) from Bush mine, 4 miles below Nulato. 
[Analyst, E. T. Allen, U. S. Geol. Survey.] 
Per cent. 
Water 11.17 
Volatile combustible matter 29. 48 
Fixed carbon 52. 02 
Ash 7. 33 
100. 00 
Sulphur 44 
Fuel ratio 1. 76 
Coke, noncoherent. 
A blacksmith at Nulato, who was attempting to use this coal for 
welding, reported that it was inferior to the coal from the prospect a 
mile above Nulato, or from the Blatchford mine, 9 miles below. This 
inferior quality is no doubt in part due to the weathered condition of 
the coal. 
The owners of this prospect reported to the writer that they had 
contracted to deliver 400 tons of this coal on the river bank for use by 
river steamers next summer. The coal will be mined and sledded over 
the ice to a suitable landing on the main channel of the river. 
_BlatcJiford a coal wine. — This mine is located on the right bank of 
the Yukon 9 miles below Nulato. The Yukon banks are low for 
about 2 miles above the mine, where the flats are extended up a small 
creek. Below the mouth of this creek a cliff of Pleistocene silt 50 
feet high extends along the river for about a quarter of a mile, below 
which sandstone cliffs rise to a height of about 100 feet. 
The coal bed of the Blatchford mine outcrops at the water's edge, 
near the upper end of this sandstone bluff. The strike throws the 
outcrop of the seams below the silt cliffs on the one hand and below 
the river bed on the other, and no other exposure of it is known. 
The sandstones at the Blatchford mine dip to the northwest at a 
high angle. Immediately above the coal bed they are dark and shaly, 
containing rather abundant fossil plants, which are probably Upper 
Cretaceous, and above these shaly sandstones are hard gray sandstones, 
a This name is also sometimes spelled Blatsford. The writer does not know which spelling is 
correct, 
