45 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 47 exhibits a sketch, reengraved from a French work, which 

 illustrates at once another of Fitch's steamboats and the Gallic ar- 

 tist's idea of the flora on the banks of the Delaware. 



Fitch, while urging the importance and the advantages of his 

 plan, confidently stated his belief that the ocean would soon be 



Fig. 47. An Ideal Sketch of the 

 Delaware. 



Fig. 48. Steamboat on Dalswlnton Lake, 178S. 



crossed by steam-vessels, and that the navigation of the Mississippi 

 would also become exclusively a steam-navigation. 



Fitch's boat, when tried at Philadelphia, was found capable of 

 making eight miles an hour. It was laid up in 1792. 



85. In 1788 Patrick Miller, James Taylor, and William Symming- 

 ton, attached a steam-engine to a boat with paddle-wheels, which had 

 been built by the first-named, and tried it for the first time on Dal- 

 swinton Lake, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 



This boat, having attained a speed of five miles an hour, another 

 was constructed (Fig. 48), and was tried in 1789. This vessel was 



Sip0&> 



Fig. 49. The Charlotte Dundas, 1801. 



driven by an engine of twelve-horse power, and made seven miles an 

 hour. This result, encouraging as it was, led to no further immediate 

 action, the funds of the experimenters having failed. 



