60                COAL-SEAM AT COMOX.          [tHA.
feet through. 150 to 300 tons are taken out daily; the cdi brings an average of six dollars a ton on delivery at the si In San Francisco it is retailed at an average price of tweli dollars (or about £2 10s. gold: there are no "greenbach accepted in California except at the regular discount). T!i Hudson's Bay Company, which had formerly a fort at Nanaimo, were the first to work this seam, hiring Indian to dig it from the outcroppings, and paying them at the rate of one blanket for eight barrels. It is an undoubted fai that the coal of Vancouver Island is its most valuable pro duction, and that it is abundant. After leaving Nanaimc~ we discovered, on a stream entering the Puntledge River n the small settlement of Comox, a very important depoaigL A seam from two to eight feet in thickness, disappearing an again reappearing on the rocky walls of a small cai?; extended for a mile of its course. This occurred five milN from navigable water, and would require the construction ti a tramway through the woods for its successful development We camped by the principal seam, and made a gigantic firs of the coal, which really appeared to be of excellent quality The stream on which we observed it was named in honour our leader, Mr. Brown.
Our journey from this place up the Puntledge River to ti1 lake of the same name was one of difficulty. We had dete mined to take a canoe there, and it had to be carried towed nearly the whole distance. Piles of drift-wood bloe the river, while its bed consisted of boulders of all sizes. W all spent more of our time in the water than out of it; ad often, when dragging the canoe by main force through t shallow but swift current, got into holes out of our dep and clung to it with great pertinacity, till once more