THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



than a hundred miles an hour, it being merely a question 

 of expense. 



In steam navigation there has been a very similar 

 course of events, with the same characteristic of a com- 

 pletely new departure, leading to unknown develop- 

 ments and possibilities. From the earliest dawn of his- 

 tory men used rowing or sailing vessels for coasting 

 trade or for crossing narrow seas. The Carthaginians 

 sailed nearly to the equator on the west coast of Africa, 

 and in the eleventh century the Northmen reached 

 North America on the coast of New England. Exactly 

 five hundred years ago Vasco de Gama sailed from Por- 

 tugal round the Cape of Good Hope to India, and in the 

 next century Columbus and his Spanish followers crossed 

 the Atlantic in its widest part to the West Indies and 

 Mexico. From that time sailing ships were gradually 

 improved, till they culminated in our magnificent 

 frigates for war purposes and the clipper ships in the 

 China and Australian trade, which were in use up to 

 the middle of the century. But during all this long 

 course of development there was no change whatever in 

 principle, and the grandest three-decker or full-rigged 

 clipper ship was but a direct growth, by means of an 

 infinity of small modifications and improvements, from 

 the rudest sailing boat of the primeval savage. 



Then, at the very commencement of the present cen- 

 tury, the totally new principle of steam-propulsion be- 

 gan to be used, at first experimentally and with many 

 failures, on rivers, canals, and lakes, till about the year 

 1815 coasting steamships of small size came into pretty 

 general use. These were rapidly improved; but it was 

 not till the year 1838 that the Great Western, of 1340 



