precluding any other arrangement. In the early morning an energetic employe of the Navigation company observed this intrusion, and taking an old locomotive up the track with a full head of steam, he let it loose upon the innocently offending train, and butted it into the Lehigh, a heap of ruins. The immediate result is not remembered, but it is a curious fact, illustrating, perhaps, the admiration of Judge Packer for pluck and energy, that the chief responsible actor in that day's drama has almost from that time been in the service of the Lehigh Valley Railroad company.

The navigation company improved the planes at Solomon's gap, and for convenience of returning trains of empty cars, light freight and passenger traffic, made a light track for locomotive power from the head of the planes north by the Laurel Run gap and back to the foot of the planes, a distance of thirteen miles, to overcome the steep mountain grade by the planes, some three miles. The steepest grade of the back track is ninety-six feet to the mile. It was considered by many to be an almost impossible feat in engineering, but it was successfully accomplished under the supervision of Dr. Charles F. Ingham, of Wilkes-Barre, an able and experienced engineer.

In 1833 the legislature appointed Messrs. George M. Hollenback, Andrew Beaumont, Henry F. Lamb, W. S. Ross, Charles Miner, Samuel Thomas, Joseph P. Le Clerc, Elias Hoyt, Benjamin A. Bidlack, E. Carey, Bateman Downing. Ziba Bennett, Jedediah Irish, Thomas Craig, Azariah Prior, Daniel Parry, Lewis S. Coryell, Joseph D. Murray, John C. Parry, William C. Livingston, Benjamin W. Richards, Robert G. Martin, Joshua Lippincott and Lewis Ryan, commissioners of the Wyoming & Lehigh Railroad company, who employed Henry Colt and Dr. C. F. Ingham, civil engineers, to examine the route through Solomon's gap and report. The elevation of the summit above the borough of Wilkes-Barre was found to be 1,251 feet, and above the Lehigh 604 feet, and the distance between the two points about fourteen miles. Grading for a double track was recommended, with a single frack at first. The commissioners, in an address to the public, say: "Persons of intelligence and capacity to judge estimate that 200,000 tons of coal and 3,000,000 feet of lumber, at least, will pass along this road to New York and Philadelphia from the vicinity of Wilkes-Barre, which now remain undisturbed where nature placed them, and the great and increasing trade of the Susquehanna, which now goes to Baltimore, will be diverted to New York and Philadelphia."

At that day, with rails of wood covered with a flat, strap-iron rail, operated by horse power, solid road beds were not so necessary as they are now. The Little Schuylkill railroad ran a light locomotive on such a track, but not with success. So, too, the Delaware & Hudson Canal company, with its first imported locomotive, a mere teapot in comparison with those of modern pattern, failed, because too heavy for the road. These estimates, ridiculous as they seem in the light of modern experience, were in accordance with the necessities of the times and the prospects they had of accomplishing a deliverance in that direction. The coal trade of the year preceding did not reach 300,000 tons from all the regions. The year before the company put their road under contract the trade was nearly 700,000 tons.

From the beginning the course of the anthracite coal trade has seemed to baffle all calculations, and those who look back see many wrecks, while in danger themselves of meeting the same fate, from want of faith in the future.

The failure of a loan in England to meet the cost of improvements to make good its loss of the upper navigation, and the sums thrown away in useless opposition to its rival roads, overwhelmed the Lehigh Coal & Navigation company, and its works passed into other hands, to be resumed as already stated. A modicum of the good sense of the early projectors might have shown them that there is room enough and market enough for all, and that competition for the coal trade must be open for the benefit of those most interested, the consuming millions scattered over the broad union of

States, from the great lakes to the gulf, and from the Atlantic far beyond the Mississippi, even to the Pacific ocean.

The Wyoming coal field is the largest and most northern anthracite basin of Pennsylvania. In area it is something under 200 square miles. or about 127,000 acres. It is about fifty miles in length and about an average of four miles in width, and extends from a point above Beach Grove, on the west side of the river Susquehanna, having a course about northeast, to its terminus a few miles above Carbondale.

Resting on the conglomerate rock of bright pebble stones cemented together, which lies in a cradle of red shale, its boundaries are easily traced along the outcroppings on the Kingston mountain on the west and the Wilkes-Barre mountain on the east, while the sinclinal axis or trough, dipping under the river, is carried deep below the rough hills of the lower townships, rising gradually with an irregular formation like solidified waves, until its measures thin out and disappear along the head-waters of the Lackawanna river, having the shape of a vast canoe.

The Susquehanna forces its way through the western boundary at the middle of the basin, where it receives the waters of the Lackawanna, which have traversed the upper regions of the basin's trough, and together they leave it at Nanticoke, taking a western gorge to Shickshinny, where the stream curves and crosses the lower point of the coal formation on its course to the ocean.

The cluster of small basins in the southern townships of Luzerne county, which are opened by the Lehigh improvements, belong to the second or middle coal field. While Josiah White, Erskine Hazard and other enterprising citizens of Philadelphia were seeking the black diamond among the rugged hills of the Lehigh to its upper waters in Luzerne county, and were solving the problem of its value as a fuel, other Philadelphians were exploring the northeastern borders of the county for mineral coal, and the passes of the Moosic mountain to find an outlet by the waters of the Lackawaxen and Delaware rivers to eastern markets.

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Mr. William Wurts was the pioneer "who first conceived the idea of transporting coal of the Lackawanna valley to market by an eastern route." A note to an article on the Delaware & Hudson Canal company in The National Magazine, August 1845, for which acknowledgments are due to Mr. Charles P. Wurts, of New Haven, Conn., says: " With such views, as early as 1844, and while that valley was yet an unbroken wilderness, without road or bridle-path above Providence, he explored it and the passes of the Moosic mountain to find an outlet to the Lackawaxen and the Delaware rivers, selecting and purchasing such coal lands as were most eligibly situated in reference to that object."

On March 15, 1823, Maurice Wurts and John Wurts, who had conceived the bold enterprise of constructing a railroad and canal to their coal lands on the Lackawanna river in Luzerne county, procured from the legislature of Pennsylvania an act authorizing Maurice Wurts of Philadelphia, his heirs and assigns, etc., to enter upon the river Lackawaxen, or any streams emptying into the same, "to make a good and safe descending navigation at least once in every six days, except when the same may be obstructed by ice or flood," from near Wagner's gap in Luzerne, or Rix's gap in Wayne county, to the mouth of the said Lackawaxen, "with a channel not less than twenty feet wide and eighteen inches deep for arks and rafts, and of sufficient depth of water to float boats of the burthen of ten tons." Certainly a modest beginning.

Forty two days after this act of assembly was approved at Harrisburg the legis lature of New York passed "an act to incorporate the president, managers and company of the Delaware & Hudson Canal company," for the expressed purpose of forming a water communication between the rivers Delaware and Hudson, so that a supply of coal might be obtained from large bodies of this valuable article belonging to Maurice Wurts, of the State of Pennsylvania.

By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature approved April 1, 1825, and an act of the New York legislature of April 20, 1825, the two companies were consolidated and reorganized in this state as the "President, Managers and Company of the Delaware & Hudson Canal company;" with power to construct and maintain such railways or other devices as may be found necessary to provide for and facilitate the transportation of coal to the canal.

Soon after the consolidation of the companies work was begun, and ground broken July 13, 1826. Parts of the New York section upon which work was first commenced were being finished when the contractor began work on the Pennsylvania section, which runs from Honesdale to the mouth of the Lackawaxen, a distance of twenty-five miles, at which point it is joined to the New York section by an aqueduct over the Delaware. The length of the canal from the Delaware to the Hudson is eighty-three miles, making the total length of canal from Honesdale to Rondout 108 miles. The act of assembly of April, 1825, at the same time authorized the company to assume all the rights originally granted to Mr. Wurts. The State had reserved the right to resume all the rights and privileges granted at the expiration of thirty years from the date of the law of March 13, 1823, without compensation to the company if the tolls received had already repaid the original cost of the canal, with six per cent. upon the capital invested.

The sites of both Honesdale and Carbondale were in the natural state of our northern wilderness when ground was broken for these canal improvements. Carbondale in 1828 contained one log cabin, built to shelter Mr. Wurts in his early explorations.

Honesdale has long been the county seat of Wayne county, a populous and flourishing borough. It was named from the first president of the company, Philip Hone, Esq.

The Delaware & Hudson Canal company's trade at first was feeble, and anthracite as difficult to introduce in New York as it had been in Philadelphia. Mr. John Wurts, many years afterward president of the company, wrote to Mr. Charles Miner, of Wilkes-Barre, a long and interesting account of his efforts to introduce coal upon boats on the Hudson to generate steam as motive power where wood had been used as fuel. It seems strange at this time that a city having constant communication with Liverpool and Glasgow should have had such strong prejudices against coal, or so little knowledge of its use. True, improvements in making coke and the discovery of applying the hot blast to the hard coal of Wales were just beginning to revolutionize the iron trade in England. It was not till 1833 that the introduction of hot blast to the furnaces on the Clyde reduced the cost of pig iron more than one-half. Then, wood was still cheap in New York. Not a boat could be prevailed upon to give it a fair trial, or voluntarily to lose a day for the purpose of testing this stone coal. The greatest concession gained was permission to work at night, while the boat was lying idle, in fitting the furnace at the company's risk, and in furnishing coal for the experiment on one of the small day boats. This was at last accomplished, and the fact demonstrated that coal was good to generate steam. In 1835 it was deemed an experiment of enough importance to receive special mention in the New York Journal of Commerce under the head, "Steam by Anthracite Coal," that the new steam ferry, "Essex," had been fitted up with Dr. Nott's patent tubular anthracite coal boiler, to use Lackawanna coal. The boat contracted for all its coal at $4 a ton.

The active competition between the Schuylkill canal and the Reading railroad, approaching completion in 1841, so reduced prices that permanent enlargement of the Delaware & Hudson canal was hastened to lessen cost of transportation and meet this competition. But it was not enough. Canals had their day and were out of fashion. The long, cold winters of northern climes, where the bright fires of anthracite coal are most needed to cheer the lengthened nights, render canals use