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During the time that Rhodes's party was in the mountains Squire Rawson rode about with them examining lands, inspecting coal-beds, and adding much to the success of the undertaking.
"I think there can be no question," said Cortlandt, "that, as a result of Jupiter's great flattening at the poles and the drawing of the crust, which moves faster in Jupiter's rotation than any other part, towards the equator, the crust must be particularly thin here; for, were it as thin all over, there would be no space for the coal-beds, which, judging from the purity of the atmosphere, must be very extensive.
It is succeeded by a horizontally stratified sandstone, which is continued up to 4000 feet, where it is overlain by coal-beds and then by limestone again.
On some of them the coal-beds form part of the cliffs along the shore; on others, copper is found in a chlorite and talcose slate. The latter is more particularly the case with Luzon, and the same formation extends to Mindoro. Much iron occurs on the mountains. These are, occasionally, obtained by the Spaniards in their excursions into the interior against these bands.
Although abroad many seams are found which are of greater thicknesses, yet similarly the other portions of the formation are proportionately greater. It is not possible therefore to realise completely the significance of the coal-beds themselves unless there is also a knowledge of the remaining constituents of the whole formation.
The occurrence of marine, or brackish-water animals, in the roofs of coal-beds, or even in the coal itself, affords no evidence of subaqueous accumulation, since the same thing occurs in the case of modern submarine forests.
Our coal is twenty-five hundred miles nearer to the Philippines than San Francisco, and twelve thousand miles nearer than its present source. If Alaskan coal-beds were opened up, we wouldn't have this yearly fight for battle-ship appropriations; we'd make ourselves a present of a first-class navy for nothing.
There is a remarkable difference in the appearance and the material of which these Carboniferous strata are formed, and those of the East and Europe. We generally think of coal-beds carbon when this period is mentioned. Here there are none.
But Germany has only 1,770; Belgium, 510; France, 2,086; and Russia only in her expansion of territory leads Europe in this respect, and has now 30,000 square miles of coal-beds. But see the use England makes of this material: in 1877, she took out of the ground 134,179,968 tons. The United States the same year took out 50,000,000 tons; Germany, 48,000,000; France, 16,000,000; Belgium, 14,000,000.
Ridges and bastions of rock, above profound valleys, culminate in cloud-capped Indrapura, at a height of 12,000 feet. Geologists affirm the vast age of Sumatra, indicated by the Silurian rock, the bastions of granite, the extraordinary vegetation fossilised in the huge coal-beds, and the sandstone formation, often a thousand feet thick, carved by time and weather into fantastic ravines.
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