THE NORTH MOUNTAIN COAL-FIELD.
This coal deposit lies in portions of Sullivan, Wyoming, and Luzerne counties. The formation is comparatively extensive, though the amount of available coal is limited. It consists of a wide area or plateau of con glomerate, with small bodies or patches of coal scattered over it, occasion ally presenting available basins of excellent coal, but more generally con taining only the lower bed A, which has been preserved on account of its position in the conglomerate, while the overlying seams have been washed away by the denuding waters.
The entire area of this elevated region, lying between the waters of the north and west branches of the Susquehanna, and drained by the waters of Bowman's Creek, Mahoopany, Loyal Lock, and Pine Creeks, is not less than 500 square miles in extent. Though lying in the midst of a popu lous region, surrounded by fast-growing cities and towns and encircled by railroads and canals, it is still a terra incognita, generally speaking, and known to but few, and to those few unfavorably. Perhaps the only parties to speak in its favor are the hunters and anglers who still find sport in its deep forests and pure mountain-streams. The hardy pioneers who have repeatedly tried to win a home from the cold and frosty soil have found their labor, patience, and perseverance only rewarded by poverty, privation, and loss. 'Many have been disappointed in their hopes and ex pectations based on the level beach ridges and the wide marshes of this upland region. The soils appear deep and rich ; but they are cold and clayish, and will not produce grain without an abundance of lime ; though the grasses flourish luxuriantly. But, like the poor settlers of Venango, the pioneers of the North Mountain have been rolling among the unlimited wealth of the mineral kingdom without knowing it, or without the ability to profit by it.
The magnificent forests which are or will be worth ten times the mere value of the soil for agricultural purposes, they cut down and burned, with immense labor, and depreciated the value of the land as the reward of their toil. Situated, as this region is, in the midst of or in close vicinity
to the great mining districts, where such vast quantities of lumber are used, it cannot fail to become of great value for its timber alone, as most of the available timber in the surrounding country is gone, or fast disappearing. Those deep and magnificent forests must, therefore, soon realize their proper value, and, instead of being burned with incredible labor by the pioneers, they will yield their wealth to the lumberman and the tanner.
This is perhaps the largest and least broken of the outlying patches of the Alleghany formation, and in its geology and topography reminds one forcibly of the great oil-regions of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Though no efforts have been made to develop it, and, we believe, but little attention paid to the subject, we think we hazard nothing in claiming for this region an oil-producing territory at the head of its streams and within the central basins. The position of the upper or "heavy oils" ought to be reached at moderate depth, because its place is immediately below the great con glomerate; but the reservoirs of light oils must lie very deep, because they are below the red shales, yet may be reached in the valleys. The thickness of the strata, however, must be great between the heavy and light oils in this region, since the red shale and the rocks immediately below it are much thicker here than in Western Pennsylvania: there their existence is doubtful, except to a limited extent; while here they are several thousand feet in thickness, according to the general order in the thinning or depreciation of the strata from east to west.