GEORGE STEPHENSON. 83 



While there was thus a gathering together of testimony as 

 regards the improvement of the roads over which wheeled 

 vehicles were to be drawn, there was gi-adually bemg developed 

 the idea of employing another and more powerful agent for the 

 propulsion of the vehicles. There cannot be the least doubt 

 that the numerous attempts to apply steam to navigation acted 

 on the minds of men of skill and invention in order to have the 

 same powerful agent applied to the ordinary requirements of 

 the road. Indeed, the first invention of William Symington 

 was applied to a carriage as well as to a barge, and his diagram 

 and detail of a steam-carriage were contemporary with his 

 invention of a steamship. It was probably in the knowledge 

 that such ideas were being wrought out into practical shape 

 that the lines were written by Dr. Darwin, to which the reputa- 

 tion of prophecy has almost attached : 



" Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam ! afar 

 Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car ; 

 Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear 

 The flying chariot through the fields of air ! " 



So wrote Dr. Darwin in his Botanic Garden in 1793, and the 

 vision of the " flying chariot " does not appear to-day much more 

 extravagant than did, when these lines were published, the 

 prediction of " rapid " travelling by means of a steam-engine. 

 Yet, nearly a century before, a very fair attempt at the con- 

 struction of a locomotive steam-engine had been made. The 

 scene of the experiment was Japan, and the actors in it were 

 the Jesuit missionaries, who sought to find favour with the 

 Emperor Kanghi. They caused a waggon of light wood to be 

 made, in the middle of which they placed a brazen vessel full 

 of live coals, and on them an " eolipile," the wind from which 

 issued through a little pipe upon a sort of wheel made like the 



