A Carpet-Bagger in Pennsylvania: I. Chiefly Concerns a New Coal Development

ON the evening of the great Grant and Colfax torchlight display I took my carpet-bag (emblem of enterprise and patriotism) and zigzagged through the thronged and illuminated city in a hack, — running the gauntlet of fifteen or twenty fragmentary processions, but reaching the Worcester Depot at last in safety, feeling very much as if I had been rattled through a kaleidoscope as big as all Boston. To the dazzle of the shifting lights and colors, and the noise of the trumpets and the shouting, I fondly supposed we were bidding a final adieu, when the train started, and we crept quietly into our berths in the dim sleeping-car. But no : at every stopping-place we were awakened (if we chanced to be asleep) by loud drums and brass and shrill-voiced patriotism ; all night long, in conservative Connecticut towns, the Boys in Blue were uproarious ; and I verily believe that, if we could have run through that night by rail to San Francisco, we should have found one vast Grant and Colfax torchlight procession, extending all the way to the Pacific.

Thursday, Oct. 29th.— A chill, gray morning. Passing through New York City in the hollow belly of a rumbling omnibus, that seems hungry for warm passengers to digest, and very much dissatisfied with two cold ones. Breakfast ; after which omnibuses and things in general appear to feel more comfortable in their minds. To the Erie Railroad ferry-boat. Crossing North River. (Ah, what a beautiful day it is! How the waves sparkle and leap, how the white sails of the luggers bulge in the sun, how mistily the calm light lies on the city roofs and the shipping !) Crossing jersey flats, which will some day be reclaimed by a system of dikes and drainage, and made the most productive portion of the State. (I wish one could hope as much of its political flats, its sour and sedge-overgrown conservatism.) Flitting by fair upland pictures, — here a field of portly corn-stooks and golden pumpkins, there a pasture-land of fading thistles and blackened weeds gone to seed ; and farther on a mountain of steep ledges, sparsely bearded with dwarfed pines and cedars, — a drove of cattle placidly feeding on green slopes at its foot. On through butter-suggesting Orange County, and up the picturesque banks of the Delaware, now on the Pennsylvania side, and now again in New York. Then down the Susquehanna, (how much our railroads and canals owe to the rivers for having cut through the mountains and prepared a grade for them !) arriving at Waverley in the dusk of the evening, and there switching off from the Erie track upon the new road to Towanda, which sleepily blinking Pennsylvania borough receives us and our carpet-bags just twenty-four hours after we left Boston.

Friday, 30th.— Sleepily blinking Towanda appears wide-awake enough this morning, and a bright, brisk child of the hills it is. Sweetly its still breath ascends in the frosty autumnal light. It lies in the lap of a lovely valley, on the west bank of the Susquehanna. Mountainous bluffs confront it, mirroring their precipitous, lichen-tinted crags and clinging forests (many-hued in autumn) in the river, which here spreads out in a lake-like expanse above the dam, and tumbles noisily and foamingly down into a wide-sweeping, shallow flood below. Mountains rise behind the town also, with long lines of boundary fence curving like belts over their ample shoulders. The checkered farms — dark squares of ploughed land and brown pastures and gray stubble-fields, contrasting with the delicate green squares of tender young wheat — clothe their giant forms in true highland plaids. Agriculture has shaven these hills to their very crowns, leaving only here and there a tuft of woods for a scalp-lock.

Last evening I sat with two friends in a private parlor of the Ward House, and talked over with them the plan of my Pennsylvania campaign. I said I wished to see something of the coal and oil, and other interesting features of the State, and placed myself in their experienced hands ; and they decided that I should first visit the newly developed coal lands of Sullivan County.

“ What is the coal,” I asked ; — “ anthracite or bituminous ? ”

“Strictly speaking, neither,” said M. “The region is interesting, as lying between the anthracite and bituminous coal deposits of the State ; and the coal is curious, as partaking of the qualities of both. In texture and cleavage it resembles the bituminous, but there is not a particle of bitumen in it. It is entirely free also from the gases which make the use of anthracite coal in our houses often so disagreeable and injurious.”

I said I thought it strange that coal of so remarkable a character had not been heard of in the market.

“Not at all,” said he. “It lies in a remote mountainous district, not much frequented hitherto except by troutfishers and hunters. But a railroad is now building which will connect the mines with the railroad and canal here at Towanda; and by another spring they will be in communication with the markets of the world.”

Meanwhile, the fact that these remarkable coal-fields were so little known to the public seemed to render a visit to them all the more desirable. Accordingly, this morning, M. sent a good stout carriage and pair of horses around to the Ward House, for our mutual friend P. and myself; and as soon as the sun was well up over the hilltops we started for the coal mountains.

Leaving the Susquehanna valley a little below Towanda, we took the road running southward to Dushore, along by the wild, rocky bed of a small tributary which ages ago scooped for itself and for civilization a passage through these hills. Of course we found the grade of the new, unfinished coal railroad servilely following in the same beaten track, (it is so much easier always to do that than to be original!) curving with the stream about the mountain bases, and cutting th rough the woods. The mountains reminded one of Milton’s fallen archangel: —

In the distance, the ruddy and golden leaves lying thick on the ground, or still clinging to the trees, had the effect of sunshine when the sun was under a cloud ; and here and there an oak-top burned like fire amongst the evergreens and gray rocks.

Passed Rattlesnake Mountain,—a stupendous, upheaved mass of loosely tumbled ledges, battered, barren, savage, producing little besides huckleberries and rattlesnakes. This ragged, rocky tract M. had lately presented to our mutual friend, and P. had accepted it, not so much for the snakes and the huckleberries, as for the satisfaction of saying he owned a mountain in Pennsylvania. In the berrying season parties come up to this wild region from the towns below,—jolly wagon-loads of women and children and girls and young fellows, starting in the nighttime, in order to arrive at the picking grounds by sunrise, and have a whole day of fun and huckleberries before them. I told P. he might yet make a good thing out of this crop, and possibly find a demand for his rattlesnakes, though this last idea was not altogether original with myself. A few years ago there lived in this vicinity an eccentric character, who conceived the brilliant project of sending to market a large and fine assortment of these amiable reptiles, and realizing a profit on them. They were created and placed here for some good reason, he argued ; and why not to sell ? Accordingly, his wife smiling upon the enterprise, he commenced forming a collection.

This worthy pair lived alone together in a solitary log-house, favorably situated for the execution of their precious scheme. The ground all around them was fertile in crawling things. The old man procured a dry - goods box and placed it in his garret, — which, by the way, was separated from the lower room of the house only by a flooring of loose boards. It was a box capable of accommodating some two or three hundred snakes, for he meant business: large sales and small profits was his idea. He had a smaller box for field operations. Carrying this between them, and armed with a pair of tongs, the good man and his dame would go out of a morning to the ledges, and perhaps bring in a dozen lusty rattlers to be transferred to the big box in the garret, when they came home to dinner.

In this way they had accumulated near two hundred specimens, when one night a rather unpleasant circumstance occurred. The snake-collector was awakened by his wife, who had been previously awakened by strange and alarming noises. Every minute or two there came a dull, heavy thump on the floor of their sleeping-chamber, which was parlor, kitchen, bedroom, all in one.

“ I do believe,” said the wife, “ them ’ere creeturs have got out of the box, and are droppin’ down through the cracks in the garret boards ! ”

The husband listened with the sensations of a speculator whose stock was falling in an unusually disagreeable manner. Thump ! thump! it was raining rattlesnakes : and how to stop the shower ? There was great danger in putting a foot out of bed, for the room was dark, and the floor was by this time alive with them. But our dealer in live stock was a man of nerve, and knew his cattle. He told the story very coolly afterwards: " A bite from one of ’em was death, of course. But I did n’t think there was much chance o’ gittin’ bit ’thout I stepped on ’em. So I set my foot down perty softly on the floor till I found a clear space, then I started for the hearth, shovin’ my feet along on the floor, and shovin’ the creeturs out of my way, gently, ye know, — mighty careful not to hurt ’em, — till I got to the fireplace and raked the coals out of the ashes and lit a lamp. Then we could see ’em, and an interestin’ sight they was ! Floor a-squirmin’ with ’em, and they beginnin’ to set their rattles to buzzin’, — music, I tell ye ! But me and my old woman set to work with the tongs, and in half an hour had ’em all back in the box agin ! ”

The growing uneasiness of the “ creeturs,” and the trouble of feeding them, rather precipitated the good man’s plans, and a few days after this adventure he might have been seen going down the river on a raft, seated on a box, chalk-marked “ Glas Handl With Cair.” Not the least astonishing part of the story is, that he actually sold his collection to showmen and speculators, and came home with money in his pocket.

Notwithstanding this brilliant example, P. said he did n’t know what use he could make of his rattlesnakes, unless it were to fatten hogs on them. Swine are extremely partial to such food, and it is said to make sweet pork. “ A pig in attacking a rattlesnake,” said P., “ seizes him by the neck, and receives his bite in the fatty protuberance of his chaps with perfect indifference; whereas a bite in any other part would prove as fatal to pigs as to men.” He had seen many a pig bitten and many a viper devoured in this way.

I was reminded of a dog I used to know, which nature had endowed with a still more wonderful instinctive faculty for despatching these dangerous creatures. He seemed to consider any common snake as entirely beneath his notice ; but let an individual of the species Crotalus appear, and his rage and hair were up in an instant If he came upon one coiled up, in the snake’s favorite attitude of defence, — the beaded tail on one side, vibrating in a sort of mist, singing its menacing song, and the devilish head at the top of the spiral, vigilant, ready to strike, darting its forked lightnings, — then mark the whelp’s sagacity : he would put out his nose and bark, to fix the reptile’s attention, and then commence walking round him at a safe distance (the rattlesnake’s fabulous “ jump ” consists simply in throwing himself forwards about two thirds of his length), until — the guardian head following his motions — he had succeeded in unwinding the coil, and getting the creature stretched out on the ground ; then he would make a sudden dart at his middle, and—well, the dog’s master usually advised spectators to stand back a little, at that crisis, if they didn’t wish to get hit by flying fragments.

Such fitting talk beguiled the way, until the mountain, which had suggested it, was out of sight. The farms grew rougher and rougher as we advanced, until at last the front wave of civilization was reached, — the primitive clearing, where the forests had within a year or two been cut down and burned in heaps, to make room for a corn-lot or a wheat-field. Huge, half-burnt logs and charred stumps still encumbered the ground. The approach of the new railroad, I was glad to see, had put a stop to this sad business, giving to the standing timber and the hemlock bark a value to-day ten times greater than that of the mere soil on which they grow. The country here is in fact too elevated for general cultivation. It lies some eighteen hundred feet above the sea. The soil is cold and sour, and the seasons short. The road, undulating over the inequalities of hill and hollow, ascends gradually all the way, until at length you come to a fish-shaped ridge (with a dorsal-fin of rail fence), from the summit of which you have a very remarkable prospect, if you only think of it.

This ridge is on the dividing line betwixt the anthracite and bituminous coal regions. Away on the left roll the billowy blue mountains that enclose the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys; on the right rise the wooded hills of the Barclay basin. Here we paused and looked about us, reminding each other of two or three things.

Fancy the form of a mastodon rudely sketched on the map of Pennsylvania, —back to the north, head towards New Jersey, and hind-quarters disappearing in Ohio. The jaws of this figure, lying mostly in two or three counties (the form of the valleys gives them the appearance of opening towards the sea), are the anthracite regions ; while the vast body, darkening almost the entire western portion of the State, is composed of bituminous coal. This imaginary sketch shows with sufficient accuracy the relative positions and proportions of the hard and soft coal areas of Pennsylvania ; but if the curious reader would carry the comparison still further, let him reflect that within the narrow limits of those fractured jaws is contained nearly all the known anthracite of the world, and then glance at the dim outlines of the almost limitless bituminous fields in other States and in other countries. Confining the estimate to this country, it is safe to say that we have two hundred thousand square miles of bituminous coal-fields, or more than four hundred for every one of anthracite.

On that dividing ridge we were midway on the neck of the imaginary mastodon, interesting vertebrae of which lay at our right and left : at our right, the semi-bituminous fields of the aforementioned Barclay basin ; on our left and in front of us, the mountains of soft anthracite which we were then on our way to visit. Along the breast and in the fore-legs of the figure, stretching southward into Maryland, are scattered similar deposits, showing the gradation from hard to soft coal. It would seem as if Nature, after forming here one vast coal-field, had proceeded to coke a very small portion of it. Anthracite appears to be simply coal that has been more or less perfectly coked by the earth’s great furnace-fires. Viewed in this light, the Sullivan soft anthracite is a perfect natural coke, from which all the bituminous and volatile matters have been expelled ; yet the heat here was not so intense or prolonged as to harden it excessively. The semi-bituminous, which comes next, lay on the borders of Nature’s great coke-ovens, and was partially influenced by the process ; while the bituminous fields beyond were exempt.

The advanced waves of civilization from the valleys we had left behind us were met by the same tide rising from the valleys before us. Descending into one of these we pounced down suddenly upon a plain, new-looking village, consisting mainly of one straight street thrown almost like a bridge across a stream-intersected glen ; an unromantic hamlet in a romantic spot. This used to be Jackson’s Hollow, until Mr. Jackson, being postmaster, and a modest man withal, changed the name to Dushore, in honor of an old Frenchman, whose real name — written Lapetitheure, or something like it — had been mispronounced and corrupted by his neighbors to that extraordinary degree. Here we made acquaintance with Mr. Jackson, who invited us to dinner, and offered us a change of horses and a guide to the mines,—hospitalities not to be slighted, by any means. As we sat at his table, he told us something of the history of the new coal development. The original discovery was due to one of those so-called accidents which have so often changed the fortunes of men and the course of history. A beehunter, having occasion to fell a tree in the woods, noticed that one of the great limbs, ploughing into the ground, threw up what appeared to be black dirt. He reported the circumstance to Mr. Jackson, who, requesting him to keep the fact secret for a while, found time the next day to go troutfishing, and visited the spot. He decided that the black dirt was the disintegrated coal of an outcrop, and set the man to digging. Going a fishing again the next day, he found that the man had dug through four and a half feet of rotten coal. Neither knew as yet to whom the land belonged ; but Mr. Jackson now began to think it worth while to look into that matter. ^Accordingly, the next time he went a fishing (it was noticed, by the way, that he did n’t seem to have his usual luck with the trout in those days), he took with him into the woods a pocket-compass and a map of the country, and satisfied himself that the tract belonged to a well-to-do neighbor. Him, therefore, he called upon, and confided to him the secret of the discovery. The gentleman listened with good-natured incredulity, and was glad enough to sell Mr. Jackson an undivided half of five hundred acres for what was then considered a good price, but would now be deemed a mere song. Mr. Jackson then endeavored to persuade him to unite with him in developing the coal ; but the other, laughing, said he did n’t believe there was any coal there, and refused even to take the trouble of going to see.

Now there is one thing noticeable about the Sullivan coal-beds. They rest on the usual floor of conglomerate, which underlies all the coal in the country, as an under-crust to the pie; but they have also, what the anthracite deposits have not, an upper-crust of sandstone, somewhat similar. This was seen by men of science, who, mistaking it for the under-crust, declared that there was no coal in that part of the country. Even after the black dirt was turned up, an experienced surveyor, sent to examine it, treated it with small respect, saying it was nothing but slate, — his faith in the general laws of science being stronger with him than the evidence of his own senses. The neighbor, adopting these conclusions, tried to dissuade Jackson from burying his money in any hole in those remote woods; but Jackson replied, in the words of the Western judge: “If this court understand herself, and she think she do, coal is certainly coming out of that mountain,” — and set to work, encouraged only by his father, then a very old man, and his brother, a self-taught, practical geologist, who joined hands with him in the undertaking.

There were at that time (1859) only two coal-stoves in all that part of the country; and the mines were twentyfive miles from the nearest accessible canal-port. To haul the coal in wagons over the rough mountain roads, for any great distance, was of course out of the question. Yet the Jacksons set to work and made an opening in the mountain-side, — the development soon showing that the court had understood herself tolerably well. In 1859, 1860, and 1861 they got out coal for their own use and for such of their neighbors as could be induced to make trial of it. The rotten coal of the outcrop soon gave place to coal of a quality that astonished even the sanguine Mr. Jackson. It was sent for analysis to professional chemists, who pronounced it the purest anthracite known. The inhabitants soon began to use it in preference to wood, even in a region of wood. Blacksmiths who tried it immediately discarded the use of all other kinds of coal, where this could be had, some sending as far as twelve or fifteen miles to haul it to their shops in wagons.

Still people remained incredulous with regard to the amount of coal in the mountains, and its availability for the genera] market; and it was not until the close of the war that Jackson succeeded in interesting capitalists in Ins enterprise. He then applied to his friend Mr. M. C. Mercur, the banker and coal capitalist, at Towanda, and at last, under pretence of taking him out on a trout-fishing excursion, got him to go and see the mines. Mercur, cautious, experienced, cool, as soon as he saw the opening, became as enthusiastic on the subject as Jackson himself. To enlist a man of his sagacity and influence in a thing of the kind was to insure its success. A company was speedily formed, the mountains were bored in many different places, regular openings made, and a railroad to Towanda projected, chartered, and begun.

Such is a brief history of the Sullivan coal-mines up to the time of our visit. After dinner, with fresh horses of Jackson’s, and Jackson’s brother as a guide, we started for the openings, about five miles distant. Climbing the hills southward from Dushore, we crossed the grade of the new railroad, which had worked its way steadily up to that altitude, and was there turning its broad furrow of rocks and soil and tree-roots along the mountain - side. Picturesque to see were the gangs of men and teams at work on jutting points here and there, on the wild slopes ; first the pioneers, mowing their gigantic swath through the woods ; then the grubbers, clearing the ground of roots ; then, where practicable, ploughs and scrapers; and lastly, shovellers and wagons ; now and then a dull thunderpeal and a puff of smoke, with perhaps a dirty-lookihg eruption of stones, indicating spots where the powder-blast was breaking the hill’s rocky ribs.

We followed the turnpike (the Susquehanna and Tioga, I think it is called) over the hills, passing the site of old Shinarsville, — a town with a history that might serve to point a moral or adorn a tale. Mr. Shinar, the founder thereof, was one of the contractors who built the turnpike. Receiving a part of his pay in State lands, he resolved to colonize them ; and, discovering here a mighty good site for a city, he laid out a fine large town in admirable order, sold house-lots, and commenced building. You could have bought almost any desirable lot of him, except certain wonderfully well situated corner-lots, which he steadfastly refused to part with, in anticipation of an early demand for them, at magnificent prices, for business blocks. You may still see the name of the town set down on old maps of the State, and the place Is still called Shinarsville, though not a vestige, not a timber, of the finely planned and partly built ville now remains. Fuit Shinarsville. I was reminded of a story I used to hear told, in my boyhood, of one Jones who sold to one Brown a piece of land on which he claimed that there was a capital mill-seat. Brown, on going to take possession, found no water-course within a mile of his purchase. Jones, on being somewhat warmly remonstrated with, on account of the apparent discrepancy between his statement and the fact, answered very coolly: “ I said there was a good mill-seat on the property, and there is ; but I said nothing about any water; you must find your own water.” If Brown, charmed by the inviting seat, had gone on and put up his mill, he would have done very much as Mr. Shinar did. A good site for a town is no better than a capital seat for a mill, without certain natural advantages, or at least the argument of necessity, to justify building upon it. Maybe, however, Mr. Shinar was, like so many originators, only a little in advance of his times, and that, now the coal-mines are opened, his phoenix will rise from its ashes.

Since the company bored the mountains and bought lands, some of the neighboring farmers have been not a little exercised in their minds with regard to the possible existence of coal under their own homesteads. It is, if I recollect rightly, at Shinarsville that the substratum of conglomerate — the dish that holds the coal — first shows its broken edges. The strata thence dip southward, and southward accordingly you must look for the contents of the dish. An old farmer living a little way on the wrong side of this outcrop thought it would be a good thing to find coal under his barren pastures, and set to digging. Some one asked him what he expected to find.

“ Wal! if I can’t strike coal,” answered the old man, “ then I ’ll dig a well.”

Young Jackson told him he was too low for coal. “Think I’m a fool?” retorted the indignant digger. “ Can’t any idiot see that I’m higher here than you be where you 're diggin’ ? ”

Jackson explained that he meant geologically too low, and succeeded in convincing the worthy man that he was actually drilling and blasting in strata some hundreds of feet below the place of the coal-beds, if they had extended so far north.

Another land-owner, a Dutchman, was not so easily persuaded to give up a dream of riches that came to him in the following manner: When the engineers were laying out the railroad, they had occasion to bore several farms hereabouts, to ascertain the nature of the rock to be excavated. This Dutchman annoyed them a good deal with questions, when they came to bore his farm, and made up his mind, from the unsatisfactory answers he received, that they were really boring for coal. One day he went out and found some fragments of soft anthracite scattered about one of the holes ; in an ecstasy of delight he gathered them up, and carried them about in his pockets for several days, showing them to everybody, bragging of his immense wealth, and refusing to believe he had been cajoled, even when the fact was avowed by the wag who had set the trap for him baited with coal from the company’s mines. I believe he still gees about, fancying himself a millionnaire.

Beyond Shinarsville we entered the primeval forest. To the eye it appears interminable. It is in fact (young Jackson told me) sixteen miles in breadth, and fifty in length from east to west, — a vast, almost unbroken belt of magnificent timber. Towering trunks of hemlock, birch, beech, ash, maple, and other trees, in great variety, and of immense size, rise at stately distances from each other, — undergrowths of the beautiful kalmia, or mountain-laurel, filling with its green embroidery the intervening spaces. Wood-choppers and bark-peelers were at work. The cheerful sound of the axe echoed through the still woods. Cords of hemlock bark were accumulating, here and there, ready to be launched upon the market as soon as the railroad should be completed ; and piles of lumber were rising like square towers around a new steam saw-mill.

Following the miners’ road, winding among the trees, we came to the principal coal opening, in the wooded side of the mountain. A broad platform had been built out at its mouth, composed of the ejected soil and rock and the black dirt of the outcrop. Thirty or forty feet below (on the north side) is the railroad, directly into the cars of which the coal will be shot down inclined spouts, or “ chutes,” — no “breaker” being required. Eighty or ninety feet above (on the south side) rises the forest-covered mountain quite steeply. On a level with the platform, the black chasm opens, bridged at its entrance by a couple of picturesque tree-trunks fallen across it, and covered farther on by a perfect roof of beautiful micaceous sandstone, which supports the superincumbent weight of hill and forest.

It was like walking into the mountain through a huge, open barn-door. The entrance is seventeen feet in height, and nearly the same in breadth. The miners were out in the woods, cutting props for the roof; and while one of them was running for his lamps, we examined the outcrop in the sides of the opening. The great coal-seam is twelve feet thick, but its edge is, so to speak, bevelled, the slant corresponding with the slope of the mountain. For a distance of several paces you find nothing, immediately beneath the soil of the surface, except the “black dirt,” which grows deeper and deeper, however, as you advance, until at length a sort of rotten coal appears at the bottom of the seam. This hardens gradually as you proceed, but it still has a rusty, demoralized look, and it is so loose that at a stroke from a shovel it falls splashing down into the side trench that drains the mine. It is not until you are well under the sandstone roof that coal of prime quality appears.

The sight here is well calculated to excite the visitor’s astonishment and admiration. On each side are perfect perpendicular walls of shining black coal, running parallel to each other, and disappearing in the darkness of the deep cavern. Silver streams of water dripping from the roof, and faintly illumined by the daylight from without, add a delicate beauty to the otherwise sombre scene. The clean white sandstone roof itself also affords a beautiful relief to the prevailing blackness.

The lamps came, and we advanced some two hundred feet farther, between those astonishing walls of coal, to the end of the spacious gallery. We were by this time well prepared to appreciate the pious enthusiasm of a well-known Boston clergyman (since deceased, widely lamented) who paid a visit to these mines last summer. When he found himself in the heart of the mountain, surrounded by this immense body of coal, which he was told extended for miles on every side, he looked about him for some moments in speechless awe and wonder, then reverently took off his hat; theology bowed before geology ; and he called out to the miners, in a sudden loud voice that echoed portentously through the long, dim-lighted cavern : “ Praise the Lord ! get down on your knees, every one of you, and praise the Lord for his wonderful providence ! ” This summons he delivered with such prophetical power of lungs and spirit, that all the miners except one threw down their tools and knelt with him on the spot. “ I thought first I would n’t kneel,” said the exception ; “ I never had knelt for any man, and I did n’t believe I ever should. But he begun to pray, and I be d—d if my knees did n’t begin to give way under me ; he put in, and my legs crooked and crooked, till I could n’t stand it no longer ; by George ! he prayed me down.”

I thought the power of the preacher must have been somewhat to bring such rude men to their knees. Not uninteresting to contemplate is the picture of the little group bowed in worship there in the hollow mine, lighted only by the small lamps hooked on to the miners’ caps, and by the serene eye of day looking in smilingly at the end of the cavern.

Returning, we saw the dripping water from the roof, like an exquisite, thin, gauzy veil, between us and the outer world, where the great trees looked strangely bright and peaceful, gilded by the warm afternoon sun. We now noted more particularly the drainage of the mine. The coal-bed dips slightly towards the south, that is, in the direction in which the openings are made, If left to take care of itself, the water would naturally follow the same course, and half fill the mine. This difficulty has been obviated, and the usual expensive pumping arrangement dispensed with, by cutting out the underlying rock, down to the level of the lowest part of the bed. The dip is five feet; and consequently the substratum has been removed to a depth of five feet at the entrance. This gives to the opening its imposing height of seventeen feet, between the roof and the floor, — a height which gradually diminishes to twelve feet, or just the thickness of the coal-seam, fifty or sixty yards fartheron. Drifts and chambers may now be carried in any direction, and this cut will drain them ; while an additional advantage is apparent in the fact that the mules, going out from the depths of the mine with the loaded coal-cars, will merely have to draw them along an extended level instead of up hill.

There are other valuable coal-seams lying under this one ; but they will not of course be worked as long as this lasts. And as this is known to underlie a tract of country at least sixteen miles in length by about five in breadth, it may be expected to last a good while.

We afterwards visited two other openings, at each of which, as here, preparations were making to mine coal on a large scale as soon as the railroad should be ready for it. The company (Sullivan and Erie Coal and Railroad Company) talk of a million tons a year.

I see no reason why they should not make good their talk ; they certainly have every advantage for doing so. The coal works easily, and it is entirely free from slate, with the exception of a single thin layer running midway through the seam. No breaker will be required, and no gang of slate-pickers seated astride the chutes, throwing out the bony and stony pieces as the coal flows down. The thickness of the seam and its nearly horizontal position are immensely in the miners’ favor. Lastly, the new railroad to Towanda gives a down-grade to the loaded coal-trains, and an up-grade to the returning empty ones.

What we had now seen, above and below the surface of the ground, was sufficient to give zest to a story which the Jacksons delight to tell, of one of the former owners of these lands. In the winter of 1836 he had been off attending a court session, somewhere over the mountains, and was returning home one moonlight evening in his own sleigh, in company with three friends. I believe they were all lawyers or judges ; and they were quite merry, as gentlemen of their profession know very well how to be, on fit occasions. When about midway of the great coalbelt, then undreamt of, the owner of the sleigh and of all that part of the mountain pulled up his horses.

“ Gentlemen,” said he, standing up in the sleigh, “ I wish to commemorate this occasion to you by an act which your children will thank me for, if you don’t. I propose to give each of you an entire section of this splendid woodland. The deeds shall be made out to-morrow, if you will gratify me by accepting it.”

“ What! ” cried the merry gentlemen ; “ land that is n’t worth the annual tax on it! You are ashamed to let it be sold for the taxes, and so you take this underhand way of getting rid of it! You shall pay for this insult ! ”

So saying, the three friends laid hands on the offender, thrust him out of his own sleigh, and compelled him to walk two miles through the snow to the next stopping-place, in jocose revenge for the indignity he had put upon them. This forest is now worth one hundred dollars an acre for its timber and bark, and I don’t know how much more for the coal it covers.

Returning to Dushore, we made inquiries with regard to the Sullivan soft anthracite of persons using it. All testified that it was entirely free from slate, clinkers, and gas. The blacksmiths were especially enthusiastic in its praise. Not a forge was furnished with the usual flue for carrying off the smoke and noxious vapors from the burning coal; for this emits none. One said, with great energy, “ I ’ve burnt all kinds, and I say this is the very bestest coal I ever drawed a bellus on.” Another, whose forge-fire was out, kindled a new one for us. In five minutes, by the watch, from the moment when he touched match to the shavings, he had a heat which he said he could “weld anything by.” Yet he declared that the coal which ignites so readily can be made to keep afire as long as any other coal. I held my face over the blaze, but could not distinguish the slightest odor from it. We threw water on the burning coal, and still it emitted only a smell of steam.

After these experiments, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever that this new coal development was one of very great importance to the public. A coal of such pure quality,¹ burning freely, without smoke, odor, or noxious vapor of any kind, is needed for many purposes, but more especially for domestic use; and its introduction is sure to be welcomed by all who value public health and comfort. It would seem, too, that the development of this new coal region should have an influence, favorable to the public, on the price of coal. Yet it is hardly to be hoped that coal will be much cheaper in years to come than it has been for a year or two past. The demand for it increases with every child born in the land, and with every tree cut down; and new developments of the kind will hardly keep pace with that demand. Moreover, as long as State laws continue to create or favor transportation monopolies, the price of coal in our Northern cities will continue to be unreliable and often exorbitant. Visiting subsequently other coal regions, in my carpet-bagging experience,

I became satisfied of the fact that it is not the coal companies proper that make the high prices, or that always enjoy the profits resulting from these prices : it is the transportation companies, or the coal and transportation companies, which take, certainly, the lion’s share of the spoils. Woe unto the unhappy coal company that puts its head into the jaws of one of those monopolies ! At Scranton I saw companies delivering their coal to the Delaware and Lackawanna Coal and Railroad Company for $ 1.60 a ton, when coal was worth seven or eight dollars in New York. They could do no differently, for they were dependent on the railroad for transportation, and the railroad would not transport it for them, but would buy it of them at its own price. As it cost those companies $ 1.25 to mine and load the coal, and as they paid, besides, from twelve to twenty-two cents a ton royalty to the owners of the coal-lands, where these were not owned by the companies themselves,— total cost, say, $ 1.45 per ton, — surely no one can say that they had a very large margin of profits left, out of which to pay salaries to officers and dividends to stockholders. This pittance appcared to be mcrely sufficient to keep them alive. I was told that it was an act of mercy on the part of the railroad to allow them even so much. But as any less would have been simply death to the companies, mercy was here the wisest policy. One does not kill the hen that lays the golden eggs.

Other coal companies were differently, but not always more fortunately, situated. Some complained that they were obliged to continue mining, when coal was cheap, and every ton they shipped cost them more than they received for it; for if they stopped work, the mines would fill with water, and to recommence afterwards would be more expensive than to keep on. They of course endeavor to make up for the loss thus sustained when the season of high prices comes round ; but they do not always succeed. Yet the transportation companies seemed to be pretty generally fattening on the profits derived from the coal companies on the one hand and the public on the other.

How this unfortunate state of affairs is to be remedied one is not prepared to say ; not through the magnanimity of corporations certainly, nor yet by means of appropriate State legislation, according to present appearances. In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, one finds the people of any given section divided into adverse political parties. Yet when a local monopoly is to be obtained or sustained, leaders of both parties, who may be at war on other questions, unite on this ; one section favors another in return for favors received ; legislative “thieves” (men who systematically vote for every measure they are paid for supporting, and oppose all others) are bought up, and the necessary bills passed, without much needless waste of time. The most that can be done at present, therefore, towards regulating the price of coal, must be done by the consumers themselves. There is no good reason why coal should be seven dollars a ton in Boston in August, and twelve in December, as it was last year. Let all those who have storage-room and money to advance lay in their year’s supply before September. This will moderate the demand, and benefit all parties concerned, especially the poor purchaser, who has not the money to advance, and who can least afford to pay the high prices of which he is inevitably the victim.

Perhaps I should add that coal companies, and even coal and transportation companies, sometimes fail to enrich their stockholders from other causes than those I have mentioned. This may occur through incompetent management; or it may be that the cost of coal-lands, and machinery, and of working poor mines, proves too great for the proceeds; or the stock may have been “ watered ” to such a degree that even good management and good mines cannot declare dividends on the sums actually paid for it by its present holders.

But to return to our journal.

October 31st.— Passed the night at Dushore. Slept (or was supposed to sleep) opposite a ball-room in full blast. N. B. The near noise of dancing-tunes, bouncing floor-boards, and such interesting calls as, “ Ladies’ chain ! ” “ Cross over ! ” “ Chassez down the middle ! ” cannot be recommended as highly conducive to slumber.

After breakfast, a gallop in a wild wind up on the mountain-side, to see the railroad grading. Looked particularly among gangs of laborers for a certain gigantic Swede, concerning whom a pleasant little provincial joke has just transpired. Wags announced that he would gratify public curiosity by appearing at ball last night. Ladies, delighted, wait expectantly till twelve o’clock. Then smallest boy in village taken out of bed, silenced by stick of candy, buttoned into big coat, — big hat resting on big coat-collar, — and brought in. Announcement, “ The giant has come ! ” Great rush of ladies to see monster. Real monster meanwhile snoring in his lair, unconscious. Ladies disappointed. So were we ; giant having gone into forest for R. R. ties ; not tall enough to be seen above tree-tops.

Sunday, Nov. 1st, Towanda. — Rain. Distant mountains shine as if sheathed in bright zinc, where light from breaking clouds strikes on their broad sloping roofs. Snow up there, I suppose.

Monday.— Cold. Snow down here, too, this morning.

Start with M. to visit Barclay semibituminous coal-mines. Barclay Brothers, Brewers (London Brewery well known to beer-drinking public generally, and to Austrian butcher Haynau, in particular), invested English gold in American lands here; hence the name. Long, winding train of empty coal-cars ; one passenger car attached, filled with miners and miners’ wives, returning, alter Sunday spent in Towanda ; skinclad hunters going up into the mountains, to track deer in tire new-fallen snow ; lumber-men, sawyers, and one or two carpet-baggers.

Wonderfully wild and beautiful scenery. Train passing up a narrow valley, or gorge, between crags plumed with snow-covered pines. On one side a mountain stream rushing down its rocky stairway, now half hid by whitened hemlocks and cedars, and bridged here and there by fallen or lodged and leaning trunks. Here and there a saw-mill.

Arrive at the coal-mountains. Train stops at the foot of an inclined plane, twenty-seven hundred feet long, with a rise in that distance of five hundred feet. “ Looks pokerish,” remarks a fellow-passenger, casting his eye up the long, dreary, snowy slope, ruled by eight black iron rails and one rope of iron wire. There are two parallel tracks for the ascending and descending cars ; and between the rails of each is a narrower separate track for a stout little truck to run on. The wire rope passes through the bolted timbers of the truck, and runs on grooved wheels set all along the centre of the track. There are two ropes, one for each track, and they coil around a pair of huge drums at the summit, so arranged that as one unwinds the other is wound up. This is what is called a “gravity road,”—the loaded cars descending by their own weight and drawing up the empty ones.

“ BARCLAY R. R. NOTICE.

“The Inclined Plane on this road is dangerous ! and no human vigilance can make it safe for persons to ride over it. The company give fair warning, and those who persist in riding on the cars do so at their own risk and peril.”

Observing this solemn notification, duly signed by the superintendent, and posted where it stared everybody in the face, I was surprised to see the passengers, who had come up from Towanda with us, mounting and struggling for places on the empty (and very black and dirty) coal-cars. M. and I followed their example, preferring, like them, to take the risk of a ride, rather than climb the mountain on foot by a circuitous wagon-road. An attendant pulled a rope, that pulled a wire (supported on telegraph-poles), that pulled, I suppose, a bell at the top of the plane. Gazing anxiously up the slope, we presently saw a train of three cars, which looked exceedingly small at that distance, creep out of the car-house, and come sliding down the other track. Immediately as it started the wire rope on our track began to straighten, and the stout little truck came up out of a cave made for it to drop into, bumped against our rear car, and commenced, very ambitiously, propelling us up the plane. Slowly at first; and we had time to adjust ourselves to the changed position of the cars rising on the sudden, steep grade,—one foot in a little more than five. M. and I stood on the cross-beam, on the hinder part of the last car, holding on to the box before us with our hands. Beside us was a man with a babe on his arm; on the fore part of the same car were three women ; the other two cars (for we also had a train of three) were equally loaded. Up, up, faster, faster, faster. Suddenly the descending train whizzed past us. Towards the summit we began to slacken speed, men at powerful brakes up there looking out for that, and at last glided smoothly and safely into the car-house. Then we turned and looked down the track. Certainly, as our fellow-passenger had remarked, it was “pokerish.” Some day we shall hear of a rope breaking, — fearful accident,—so many persons killed ; then nobody will ride for a long time : then, after a while, everybody will ride again, as now.

On the summit, ride on an engine to the mines, still distant a mile or more. Superb scenery; mountain summits all around us, forest-crowned and snow-clad. On our right a precipitous, yawning chasm betwixt us and our nearest neighbor of a mountain. We stop just below where a roaring, dashing torrent tumbles into it, the foam of its waters rivalling in whiteness the surrounding snow.

Arrive at the foot of the chutes, down which the coal is shot into the cars from a level still fifty feet or more above. Notice here two immense black mounds or small mountains, picturesquely creamed over with an imperfect coating of snow. Black caves on their sides, where men are shovelling, show that these are merely piles of coal, some ten or twelve thousand tons in each, the superintendent tells us ; “ stock coal,” as it is called, being mined and heaped here in seasons when coal is cheap, ready to be shipped when prices are higher.

Climb wooden staircase to top of chutes, and walk into Barclay Village ; a cluster of wooden houses, a hundred or more, perched on the wild mountain crest, and surrounded by the wilderness. There is another similar village on a neighboring mountain. The two accommodate about three thousand souls, and have their schools, Sunday schools, rival sects, Sunday meetings, shops, and post-offices, like other villages. The inhabitants are all connected in some way with the mining interest, which alone built and alone supports these remote outposts of civilization.

Behind Barclay Village, on the side of the crest, is the coal opening, — a low, square, cribbed passage, out of which the loaded cars come, drawn by mules, and, passing a small weighinghouse, where their freight is recorded, discharge their contents down the thundering chutes. An entering train is stopped by the superintendent, who comes bringing big bundles of straw ; this is spread out in one of the empty cars for us to sit or lie down upon, and we got in. The word is given, the mule-bells tinkle, the cars start, and we dive into the black passage, lighted only by a lamp in the superintendent’s hand, and another on the driver’s cap. The roof, which, beyond the cribbed opening, is of slate or sandstone, is in some places so low that we are in danger of hitting our heads against it. After riding about three thousand feet, we alight and explore the mines still farther on foot, visiting the miners at work, each in his separate chamber branching off from the drift.

The mountain here seems completely honeycombed with drifts, chambers, and air-courses, very wonderful to a person visiting a coal-mine for the first time. The railroad track has branches that follow each miner into his chamber as far as he goes. This semi-bituminous coal breaks easily. The miner, getting down perhaps on his side, digs out the bottom of the seam with a pick, then wedges down the rest from the roof. He is assisted by a laborer, who breaks up the large pieces, and loads the cars. These, when filled, are run out to the main track in the drift, and taken away by the mules. The miners here are chiefly Irish and English, and a cheerful-minded, darkness-seeking set of men they appear to be.

Afternoon. — Return to Towanda.

Tuesday. — Election day. All quiet on the Susquehanna. This day the nation utters its voice for Grant and peace.