Note 152 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Gray says, in 1809, that "no coal has ever yet been found in Canada, probably because it has never been thought worth searching after. It is supposed that coal exists in the neighborhood of Quebec; at any rate, there can be no doubt that it exists in great abundance in the island of Cape Breton, which may one day become the Newcastle of Canada."—P. 287.
"No idea can be formed of the importance of the American coal seams until we reflect on the prodigious area over which they are continuous. The elliptical area occupied by the Pittsburg seam is 225 miles in its largest diameter, while its maximum breadth is about 100 miles, its superficial extent being about 14,000 square miles.
"The Apalachian coal-field extends for a distance of 720 miles from northeast to southwest, its greatest width being about 180 miles.
"The Illinois coal-field is not much inferior in dimensions to the whole of England."—Lyell's America, vol. ii., p. 31.
"It was the first time I had seen the true coal in America, and I was much struck with its surprising analogy in mineral and fossil characters to that of Europe; ... the whole series resting on a coarse grit and conglomerate, containing quartz pebbles, very like our millstone grit, and often called by the Americans, as well as the English miners, the 'Farewell Rock,' because, when they have reached it in their borings, they take leave of all valuable fuel."—Ibid., vol. i., p. 61.