Whether coal was thus discovered or not, its first discovery must have occurred early in the history of the world. More than twenty centuries ago the Greek scholar, Theophrastus, wrote of the coals which were used by blacksmiths. There are indications that coal was mined in England before that country was conquered by the Romans. But not until the twelfth century was enough of the mineral mined in Newcastle, the great coal region of England, to warrant its being carried to London. As this coal was brought in vessels to the metropolis it received the name of "sea-coal," and it was thus called for several centuries.
How strange it is that opposition always arises to every new thing! People are always to be found who think that anything with which they are not familiar cannot be good. So it was in London. A cry began to arise that the use of coal was injurious to health. The coal was soft or bituminous, and burned with considerable flame and a dense smoke. This was before the common use of chimneys, and therefore the air in the rooms where it was burned became filled with an unpleasant odor. The belief was general that the use of coal rendered the air unfit to breathe, and Parliament was requested to put a stop to it. King Edward I. issued a proclamation forbidding any but blacksmiths to burn sea-coals, and directing that buildings from which coal-smoke was seen to come should be torn down. Though the law was repealed under a later king, coal was but little used for household purposes until the eighteenth century.
Most of the coal beds in the United States are situated at some distance from the ocean; therefore the first colonists, settling along the coast, were for a long time ignorant of their existence. The first white man to discover coal was Father Hennepin, who more than two hundred years ago, while exploring the Mississippi River, found it in Illinois. The first mines worked were the Richmond fields in Virginia, where coal was taken out a century and a half ago.
There is a tradition that a boy left home one morning to go fishing. After trying his luck for a time he found that his bait was gone. Accordingly he began to hunt for crawfish, and while searching stumbled over some black stones which attracted his attention. He had found the "outcrop" of a coal bed, and on his return he made known his discovery. A rich vein of coal was soon disclosed, and mining on a small scale was begun. We must remember that this story is only tradition and may not be true. We might wonder, perhaps, how the boy knew that the stones were any different from other rocks except in being black.
