The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-05 00:00:00

Festivities at St. Petersburg.

The fetes on the occasion of the marriage of the
Czarewitch were continued on Monday by a ball
given at the British Embassy, which was acknow-
ledged to have been a magnificent reunion, and to
have been extremely animated and most successful
in every respect. The invitations, issued to a some-
what restricted number, about 300 of the elite of
St. Petersburg, named nine o'clock as the time of
the ball, and many of the guests paid their hosts
the compliment of coming at the time appointed.
Lady Buchanan and the Ambassador, in his gold
embroidered uniform of office, received the guests
at the door of the reception-room. The fete pre-
sented the appearance of a Court ball ; the guests
were in full state uniforms, with their decorations,
as at the late ball at the Winter Palace. The
toilettes of the ladies were of great richness and
brilliancy, and withal remarkable for the exquisite
taste which they displayed.
The apartments of the British Embassy, though
not of remarkable extent, are handsome and well
proportioned. They are in general decorated in
white and gold, relieved here and there by fine
Sevres vases filled with beautiful flowers. The
ball-room is pure white, decorated with rich
mouldings and caryatides. By an admirable arrange-
ment the refreshment room was in the Ambassador's
room at the end of the apartments opposite to the
ball room. In an adjoining room was the private
tea table for the royal vititors. This decentralisa-
tion of the fete, so to speak, added to the relative
position of the rooms, which were admirably adapted
for the circulation of the company, prevented
crowding at any one point. At about ten o'clock
the imperial family and the foreign princes made
their appearance. The Prince of Wales, as a mark
of courtesy to Sir A. Buchanan—who is a Scotch-
man—wore the Highland dress, a red vest, and plaid
and kilt of Stuart tartan. He also wore the grand
cordon of the Danish Order of the Elephant. A
gentleman of the prince's suite also appeared in a
Highland costume, the vest of black velvet.
The ball was opened by the Cz Irewitch at about
half-past ten with Lady Buchanan, the Grand
Duchess Maria Feodorona dancing with the Prince
of Wales, the Grand Duchess Alexandra Joscphovna
with the English Ambassador, and the Prince Royal
of Denmark with the Grand Duchess Catherine Mi-
hailovna. About half an hour later the Emperor
appeared, looking very well, and quite au Emperor,
iu his red uniform of Horse Guard officer, and his
helmet surmounted by the golden spread eagle.
After a turn or two round the saloon his Majesty
approached M. Larrainzar, the Mexican Minister,
and asked him if he bad news from the Emperor
lle next spoke to M. de Moira, the
Porthuese Minister, who bowed low and often in
response, thanking the Emperor for the favours he
had lately conferred on him. He had that morning
received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the
White Eagle, one of the first of the Russian orders.
The Count of Redern, the Prussian Minister, who is
about to leave St. Petersburg, likewise received that
day the Order of St. Alexander Nevski. The Em-
peror then sat down at the whist-table with Prince
Basil Dolgorouky, Baron de Lieven, and Count
John Tolstoi, Postmaster-General.
Besides the illustrious guests above named the ball
was honoured by the presence of the Grand Duke
Nicolaievitch, the -GGrraaundd
DDuukkee
Michael Vladimir Alexandrovitch, the Grand Duke Con-
stantine
nd Duchess Olga Feodo-
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asnedn itohre,
Gt
ae
rovna, his Grand Ducal Highness Duke George
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, their Imperial Ili
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Prince Nicholas Maximilianoviteb, Duke Leuch-
tenberg,ofDachessof
and theeu
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Highness
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Prince
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Alexander of Hesse, his Imperial Highness Prince
Peter of Oldenburg, their IliothnessesPrince Herman
of Saxe-Weimar, and Prince Albert of Saxe-Alten-
burg, Duke of Saxe.

The dances proceeded without interruption for
some time, the august visitors taking part in them
with a spirit fully equal to that displayed by them
at the fete recently given by the Princess Helen
Kotchoubey. It was remarked by some that the
number of youthful countenances and showy
shoulders seemed to be in excess of those displayed
on former festival evenings. This was attributed
to the number present from the "British Colony"
in St. Petersburg. As for the dresses of the ladies,
it would pass the limits of any reasonable space to
attempt to describe them. Suffice it to say that
poplin was the preponderating material—velvet
poplins, silk poplins, satin poplin!, poplins of every
colour of the rainbow. An exception must, however,
be made in favour of the marvellously beautiful
attire of the Grand Duchess Alexandra Josephovna.
Let our readers picture to themselves a white dress
with three flounces rolling in vaporous folds, and
confined with garlands of algae and other sea-
weeds, which were also to to be seen in the head-
dress ; the whole surrounded and, so to speak,
flooded with waves of light, with green flashes from
the most perfect and magnificent parure of emeralds
that the eye has seen—necklace, bracelets, ear-
rings, chaplet, and ornaments for the corsage, &c.
The harmony of this whole display, which at the
same time was perfectly in keeping with the style
of ball dress, and in no sense suggested that- of a
fancy ball, enhanced a grace and beauty too well
known to need mention. The august lady appeared
almost a vision of a goddess of the sea surrounded
with the beauties of her native element. The supper
was served to the guests seated at table, and after-
wards dancing recommenced, and w
that the as spiritedly
atedil:
kelptt
iuspitieileldtlhersesetoo'claodcdk morning.
Ambassador
Lady Buchanan did the honours of the embassy with
a graceful heartiness, and were unwearied, and, it
might almost be said, übiquitous in their attention
to the guests, from the commencement to the close
of the fete. They were ably seconded by the per-
sonnel of the embassy, who evinced a zeal and readi-
ness which in no small degree contributed to the
complete success of this brilliant fete. It was felt
• that the great power of Britain was worthily repre-

Pennsylvania has almost the monopoly of anthra-
cite coal. There are bits of it in Wales and
Virginia, and faint streaks along the edges of bitu-
minous coal beds elsewhere, where_the old fires sur-
Ivived the flood a little longer than in the rest of
the neighbourhood. Down in Rhode Island, too,
there are mines of anthracite coal, into which a good
deal of money has gone.
The anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania are
comprised in 400 square miles of territory, and lie
within the-counties of Schuylkill, Carbon, Luzerne,
and Wyoming, all adjoining each other among the
easternmost foot hills of the Alleghany mountains,
and in the valleys of the Lehigh; Schuylkill, and
upper Susquehanna rivers. They lie in three
masses, the lower or Schuylkill, the middle or
Lehigh, and the upper or Wyoming, and amount
to 640 square miles of land. All the glittering
black coals that make furnace fires all over New
England and New York, and get up steam for
shops and mills, come from this little section of
country, and can and could be found nowhere
else. Canals and railroads penetrate and thread
this region in all directions. Ten years ago there
were 758 miles of canals, and 1,030 miles of railway
open and in operation to and among the anthra-
cite coal-fields of Pennsylvania. Since then the
coal production has nearly doubled, and railway ac-
commodation must have grown in nearly as great
a degree.
Railways are fast superseding canals. The Lehigh
Navigation Company is substituting a railway for
its canal through the Lehigh valley—destroyed in
part by a freshet four years ago--and the great
Pennsylvanian Canal has not paid a dividend since
the Reading Railroad was opened.
The gross product of anthracite coal is about 10
millions of tons a year, nearly two millions of which
are consumed in the neighbourhood, the rest goes
to Philadelphia, adjacent tide water ports, and New
York. New York and New England are the chief
consumers, only a small quantity goes west from
the northern coal field by the Erie Railroad and
its branches. Port Richmond, near Philadelphia,
and Elizabeth-port, near New York, are the chief
centres of the coal trade on the coast. It is calcu-
lated that the yield of the mines could be doubled,
to produce 20 millions of tons a year. But the
supply is calculated to last, even at this rate, several
hundreds of years, when recourse could be had to
mines of bituminous coal scattered profusely, not
only through Pennsylvania, but in other States of
the Union. The cost of mining and starting the
coal varies from $l-04 to $2-60 per ton ; an average
of $2-12 on leaving Maunch Creek, the central
point of the Lehigh mines. This includes the pay
of the miner, which varies from 35c. to 75e. a ton.
The rest of the $lO to $2O paid per ton for the
coals in New England is for carriage, and for the
profits of intermediate dealers.
The various names by which anthracite coals are
known in the market, as Lehigh, llazelton, Peach
Mountain, Lackawanna, Beaver Meadow, &c., only
indicate the mines, or groups of mines, from which
they are taken. There are shades of difference be-
tween many of them, sometimes of hardness, some-
times of purity, and often only in the care with
which they are prepared, and the slate culled before
being sent to market. Apart from the land con-
taining the coal, it costs $150,000 to open a coal
mine, to bring it fairly into operation, to provide
it with timber, and tracks, and cars ; to erect the
building and put in the machinery for breaking up
and separating the coal for the market.
It is a peculiarity of the anthracite coal veins
that they lie wrinkled and bowed between the red
sandstones and conglomerates that are their inse-
parable companions. The bituminous coals lie in
even, parallel strata ; but the convulsions of heat
and force that manufactured the anthracite coal
turned its beds into the bow shapes in which they
are found, sometimes coming out to the surface for
light and to announce themselves, and again hidden
beneath their neighbours and protectors. But the
presence of the latter is a sure sign of their hiding-
places. The anthracite veins are of all sizes, from
two to three feet to near 50 and 60 feet, though the
latter are in fact several coal seams separated by
thin layers of slate and conglomerate. The usual
cDurse is to open from the side of a hill through the
amb then
to ou outer coveringavnte
the intoco nl i
then galleries, middle o,
or fa
vent,inch
and
chambers,
,
alld
the directions, iwo nasli
walls.
leaving columns of the mineral to sup-
port
lle