ASIA.
There are but few other localities of which we have available data, where coal has been developed.
We only know that extensive fields of the true Carboniferous formations, both bituminous and anthracite, exist in the vast Chinese Empire, which contains 5,000,000 square miles of territory.
Mining is conducted in a primitive manner, as it was originally in Eng land, or as late as 1840-1850 in some portions of that island, but in a more Christian and civilized manner. In England, Scotland, and Wales, women and girls were employed to transport the coals to the surface; but in China only men and boys are employed in this operation, which, however slow and behind the age, is rather in advance of that civilized people, who, about the same time, forced opium upon the Celestials at the point of the bayonet.
The English nation, however, has nobly atoned for some of its past errors, and has sent civilization, liberty, and light to the uttermost corners of the earth : if sometimes at the cannon's mouth or the point of the bayonet, it is none the less to be valued and appreciated. The exclusive and semi-barbarous Celestials, with their genealogy almost direct from Noah, and their population of 400,000,000, are less powerful than the English in physical force or material resources, and utterly in the dark in regard to science and the arts. We may attribute this wonderful ascend
ency and increase of wealth and material power, first, to the enlightening and civilizing influence of religion, and secondly, to the consequent intel ligence which has developed her resources of coal and iron.
Coal is known to exist in Hindostan, on the Ganges, and is mined to some extent by the British in India; but too little has been developed to enable us to make our data interesting or valuable. We merely glance at those distant localities to give a general view of the distribution of coal; and we may here simply mention the fact of the existence of coal in Africa being reported by Livingstone and other explorers of the interior of that vast and undeveloped continent. Bat the geology of that country, as far as we are yet informed, is not favorable to the existence of coal. It is found at the mouth of the Zambezi, and at numerous points on the extensive African coasts ; but we believe it is no where mined to any extent.