feet thick for a floor. Beneath this is another vein ten feet thick, resting on a floor of fire-clay six feet thick and of good quality. Under the fire-clay is a light-colored sandstone one hundred and sixty feet in thickness, overlying an eighteenfeet seam of very good coal. The Bucoda coal is a black lignite, preferred for domestic purposes. The three seams all pitch five degrees to the east, which makes it convenient to work.
The Northwestern Coal and Transportation Company shipped forty-two thousand six hundred and seventy-five tons during the year ending December 1, 1889, which is a third more than mentioned in the report of the governor quoted above. The coal-mines of West Washington employ over two thousand miners and other laborers, and no miners receive less than three dollars a day. This, too, is but the beginning of a very great industry, and the time will soon arrive when Washington will rival Pennsylvania in coal and iron production.
Iron follows naturally after coal, one being necessary to the other in manufactures. This northwest corner of the United States is fortunate in possessing them in conjunction. The ironores of Washington comprise bog-iron or limonite, hematite, and magnetic ore. Bog-ore is found underlying the flats bordering Puget Sound. Large beds of magnetic ore occur in the Cascade Mountains, at a height above the water-courses of from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet. The largest discovered deposit is on the Cle-elum River, in Kittitas County on the east side of the range, and about twenty-five miles north of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It is owned by the Moss Bay Company, an English corporation which designs manufacturing iron and steel on a large scale. Extensive deposits are also found on the Snoqualmie River, which are reached from Seattle by the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway. The ores from this section are what are termed typical steel-ores, of a superior quality. Analysis gives a greater per cent, of metallic iron than the average of Lake Superior or Iron Mountain, Missouri, ores, with more sulphur and less phosphorus than those, and with very little more silica than the former, and much less than the latter. The present difficulty in working the
