INLAND STEAM NAVIGATION. 



steady and rapid progress. But it took different directions, 

 governed by the peculiar geographical and commercial circum- 

 stances attending these countries. The genius and enterprise of 

 the United States saw before and around it a vast territory, inter- 

 sected by navigable rivers of unequalled length, forming lines of 

 water communication on a colossal scale between its extensive 

 interior and the sea-board. The Mississippi and its tributaries, 

 with their sources, lost in distant tracts as yet untrodden by 

 civilised man, and navigable by large vessels for many thousands 

 of miles, the Hudson, all but touching upon those magnificent 

 inland seas that stretch along the northern boundary, and are 

 almost connected with the Mississippi by the noble stream of the 

 Illinois, the Delaware, the vast Potomac, and, in fine, a coast 

 thousands of miles in extent, fringed by innumerable bays and 

 harbours, and land-locked basins having all the attributes of 

 lakes, these addressed themselves to the eye of the engineer and 

 the capitalist, and determined the direction of enterprise. The 

 application of steam power to inland navigation the construc- 

 tion of vessels suited to traverse with speed, safety, and economy, 

 rivers and lakes, harbours, bays, and extensive inlets this was 

 the task and the vocation of the American engineer, and this the 

 interest of the capitalist and the merchant.* 



3. The problem of steam-navigation, however, presented itself 

 to the British engineer under other conditions. In a group of 

 islands intersected by no considerable navigable rivers, and 

 neither requiring nor admitting any inland navigation save that 

 of artificial canals, separated, however, from each other and 

 from the adjacent continent of Europe by straits, channels, gulfs, 

 and other arms of the sea, it was apparent that if steam power 

 should become available at all, it must be adapted to the naviga- 

 tion of these seas and channels it must be adapted to accelerate 

 and cheapen the intercourse between the British islands, between 

 port and port upon their coasts, between them and the various 

 ports on the adjacent coast of Europe, and finally to establish a 

 communication with the Mediterranean and the coasts of Africa, 

 Asia, and Europe, which are washed by it. While the American, 

 therefore, was called on to contrive a steam-vessel adapted to 

 inland and smooth-water navigation, the British engineer had the 

 more difficult task, to construct one which should be capable of 

 meeting and surmounting all the obstructions arising from the 

 vicissitudes of the deep. 



The result of the labour and enterprise of the English nation, 

 directed to this inquiry, has been the present sea-going steam-ship. 



* For a more developed notice of American Steam Navigation, see 

 Railway Economy, chap, xvi., and Museum, vol. ii. p. 17. 



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