that purpose by his connection with Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, then engaged in experimenting on the application of mechanical power to the driving of his double paddle-boat. The power of men was first tried, but the labor was found too severe; and when Mr. Miller went to see Symington's model, and informed the inventor of his difficulty in obtaining a regular and effective power for driving his boat, Symington-his mind naturally full of his own invention-at once suggested his steam-engine for the purpose. The suggestion was adopted, and Mr. Miller authorized him to proceed with the construction of a steam-engine to be fitted into his double pleasure boat on Dalswinton Lock, where it was tried in October, 1788. This was followed by farther experiments, which eventually led to the construction of the Charlotte Dundas in 1801, which may be regarded as the first practical steam-boat ever built.

Symington took out letters patent in the same year, securing the invention, or rather the novel combination of inventions, embodied in his steam-boat, but he never succeeded in getting it introduced into practical use. From the date of completing his invention, fortune seemed to run steadily against him. The Duke of Bridgewater, who had ordered a number of Symington's steamboats for his canal, died, and his executors countermanded the order. Symington failed in inducing any other canal company to make trial of his invention. Lord Dundas also took the Charlotte Dundas off the Forth and Clyde Canal, where she had been at work, and from that time the vessel was never more tried. Symington had no capital of his own to work upon, and he seems to have been unable to make friends among capitalists. The rest of his life was for the most part thrown away. Toward the close of it his principal haunt was London, amid whose vast population he was one of the many waifs and strays. He succeeded in obtaining a grant of £100 from the Privy Purse in 1824, and afterward an annuity of £50, but he did not live long to enjoy it, for he died in March, 1831, and was buried in the church-yard of St. Botolph, Aldgate, where there is not even a stone to mark the grave of the inventor of the first practicable steam-boat.

While the inventive minds of England were thus occupied, those of America were not idle. The idea of applying steampower to the propulsion of carriages on land is said to have oc

CHAP. II.]

EVANS'S STEAM-CARRIAGE.

71

curred to John Fitch in 1785; but he did not pursue the idea "for more than a week," being diverted from it by his scheme of applying the same power to the propulsion of vessels on the wa

About the same time, Oliver Evans, a native of Newport, Delaware, was occupied with a project for driving steam-carriages on common roads; and in 1786 the Legislature of Mary

land granted him the exclusive right for that state. Several years, however, passed before he could raise the means for erecting a model carriage, most of his friends regarding the project as altogether chimerical and impracticable. In 1800 or 1801, Evans began a steam-carriage at his own expense; but he had not proceeded far with it when he altered his intention, and applied the engine intended for the driving of a carriage to the driving of a small grinding-mill, in which it was found efficient. In 1804 he constructed at Philadelphia a second engine of fivehorse power, working on the high-pressure principle, which was placed on a large flat or scow, mounted upon wheels. "This," says his biographer, " was considered a fine opportunity to show

This statement is made in "The Life of John Fitch," by Thompson Westcott, Philadelphia, 1857. Mr. Thompson there states that the idea of employing a steamengine to propel carriages on land occurred to John Fitch at a time when, he avers, "he was altogether ignorant that a steam-engine had ever been invented!" (p. 120). Such a statement is calculated to damage the credibility of the entire book, in which the invention of the steam-boat, as well as of the screw propeller, is unhesitatingly claimed for John Fitch.

the public that his engine could propel both land and water conveyances. When the machine was finished, Evans fixed under it, in a rough and temporary manner, wheels with wooden axletrees. Although the whole weight was equal to two hundred barrels of flour, yet his small engine propelled it up Market Street, and round the circle to the water-works, where it was launched into the Schuylkill. A paddle-wheel was then applied to its stern, and it thus sailed down that river to the Delaware, a distance of sixteen miles, in the presence of thousands of spectators."* It does not, however, appear that any farther trial was made of this engine as a locomotive; and, having been dismounted and applied to the driving of a small grinding-mill, its employment as a traveling engine was shortly forgotten.

* Horne's "Memoirs of the Most Eminent American Mechanics," New York, 1858, p. 76.

CHAP. III.]

EARLY RAILWAYS.

73

CHAPTER III.

THE CORNISH LOCOMOTIVE-MEMOIR OF RICHARD TREVITHICK.

WHILE the discussion of steam-power as a means of locomotion was proceeding in England, other projectors were advocating the extension of wagon-ways and railroads. Mr. Thomas, of Denton, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, read a paper before the Philosophical Society of that town in 1800, in which he urged the laying down of railways throughout the country, on the principle of the coal wagon-ways, for the general carriage of goods and merchandise; and Dr. James Anderson, of Edinburg, about the same time published his "Recreations of Agriculture," wherein he recommended that railways should be laid along the principal turnpike-roads, and worked by horse-power, which, he alleged, would have the effect of greatly reducing the cost of transport, and thereby stimulating all branches of industry.

Railways were indeed already becoming adopted in places where the haulage of heavy loads was for short distances; and in some cases lines were laid down of considerable length. One of the first of such lines constructed under the powers of an Act of Parliament was the Cardiff and Merthyr railway or tram-road, about twenty-seven miles in length, for the accommodation of the iron-works of Plymouth, Pen-y-darran, and Dowlais, all in South Wales, the necessary Act for which was obtained in 1794. Another, the Sirhoway railroad, about twenty-eight miles in length, was constructed under the powers of an act obtained in 1801; it accommodated the Tredegar and Sirhoway Iron-works and the Trevill Lime-works, as well as the collieries along its route.

In the immediate neighborhood of London there was another very early railroad, the Wandsworth and Croydon tram-way, about ten miles long, which was afterward extended southward to Merstham, in Surrey, for about eight miles more, making a total length

of nearly eighteen miles. The first act for the purpose of authorizing the construction of this road was obtained in 1800.

All these lines were, however, worked by horses, and in the case of the Croydon and Merstham line, donkeys shared in the work, which consisted chiefly in the haulage of stone, coal, and lime. No proposal had yet been made to apply the power of steam as a substitute for horses on railways, nor were the rails then laid down of a strength sufficient to bear more than a loaded wagon of the weight of three tons, or, at the very outside, of three and a quarter tons.

It was, however, observed from the first that there was an immense saving in the cost of haulage; and on the day of opening the southern portion of the Merstham Railroad in 1805, a train of twelve wagons laden with stone, weighing in all thirty-eight tons, was drawn six miles in an hour by one horse, with apparent ease, down an incline of 1 in 120; and this was bruited about as an extraordinary feat, highly illustrative of the important uses of the new iron-ways.

About the same time, the subject of road locomotion was again brought into prominent notice by an important practical experiment conducted in a remote corner of the kingdom. The experimenter was a young man, then obscure, but afterward famous, who may be fairly regarded as the inventor of the railway locomotive, if any single individual be entitled to that appellation. This was Richard Trevithick, a person of extraordinary mechanical skill but of marvelous ill fortune, who, though the inventor of many ingenious contrivances, and the founder of the fortunes of many, himself died in cold obstruction and in extreme poverty, leaving behind him nothing but his great inventions and the recollection of his genius.

Richard Trevithick was born on the 13th of April, 1771, in the · parish of Illogan, a few miles west of Redruth, in Cornwall. In the immediate neighborhood rises Castle-Carn-brea, a rocky eminence, supposed by Borlase to have been the principal seat of Druidic worship in the West of England. The hill commands an extraordinary view over one of the richest mining fields of Cornwall, from Chacewater and Redruth to Camborne.

Trevithick's father acted as purser at several of the mines. Though a man in good position and circumstances, he does not