SECTION OF STEAM TRANSl'dit TATION. lo3 



llic nation \vlii<;li was desliued after vv;> ids to liitvc tlic j^reatcst, steain 

 iiav.v in the world, and a handsome fee was paid Fultou to return to 

 England, where ho had alterations and additions made by Bolton and 

 Watt, at Solio, to one of their own engines, which was exported to 

 America and i)laced afterwards in the Olennont., the lucky boat which 

 gave Fulton fame and fortune. Thus we lind tliat this celehraU'd in- 

 ventor, who designed wliat lives in history as the first sncfH'Ssful steam- 

 boat in' the world, pursued his investigations in France, completed his 

 engine in England, and won bis laurels in America. 



There is little else in the Frencb museums, either in the Conserva- 

 toire or the naval section of the Louvre, of interest to the section of 

 steam transportation. 



N'nval Ahiseum, Venice. — This museum is full of the most interesting 

 models and relics, some of them of great age, but 1 could find nothing 

 to even suggest that the subjects of the Queen of the Sea had any 

 ideas in regard to paddle-wheel or i)ropeiler naAnfjation by steam or 

 otherwise prior to this century. In Eome is to be seen a marine paint- 

 ing several centuries old representing oxen walking around a circle on 

 the deck of a vessel driving a windlass geared to a paddle-wheel in the 

 stern of the boat — a somewhat similar arrangement to the stern-wheel 

 boats used foi' shoal navigation on the Ohio ar.<l Mississippi Rivers. 

 In another painting two or three centuries old a sea-nymph sits lloat- 

 ing in a shell, with a paddle-wheel apparently revolving on one side. 

 It would seem, however, that the gilded lloatlng palace, in which the 

 Doges performed the (seremony of wedding the sea each year, and 

 which was driven bj' the galley slave chained to his oar, was the most 

 advanced stage of marine architecture to which the Venetians — once 

 rulers of the sea — attained, until after the introduction of steam. 



PETITION TO CONGRESS. 



A description of the section, whicli was published in the Washing- 

 ton Star, January 1(5, 1S86, having been widely circulated during my 

 absence abroad, I found upon my return that over thirteen hundred 

 gentlemen connected with railroads in all sections of the United States 

 had ])etitioned Congress for an appropriation to establish a section in 

 the Kational Museum devoted to the history of the railroad and steam- 

 boat. Neither at this session, nor <luring the next, was this rerpiest 

 complied with, and I have been compelled to do what little has been 

 done since my return, with my ])rivate means, during brief periods of 

 intermission from railway duties; short leaves of absence having been 

 granted through the kindness of the general manager of the rennsyl- 

 vania Kailroad Com])any, in whose service I have been employed for 

 nearly fifteen years consecutively. 



A copy of the petition to Congrciss, with the names of the more prom- 



