382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



portance was the James River and Kanawha, which began at 

 Richmond, and was designed to connect the Chesapeake Bay 

 with the Ohio River. It was proposed by Washington and begun 

 in 1785, and afterward carried as far westward as Buchanan in 

 Virginia. During the year 1818 leading merchants of Savannah, 

 Ga., had constructed, through the advice of Captain Moses Rog- 

 ers, of that city, a combination steam and sailing vessel to run 

 between Savannah and Liverpool. The machinery and engine 

 were built in New York by Daniel Dod, a Virginian, who had 

 moved to that city, and on the 20th of May, 1819, this vessel, 

 which was christened the Savannah, steamed out of the Savan- 

 nah River for Liverpool, making the first transatlantic trip by 

 a steam vessel in twenty-two days. It created a great sensation 

 in England, and "the people crowded the Mersey's banks filled 

 with surprise and admiration when she entered the harbor of 

 Liverpool under bare poles, belching forth smoke and fire, yet 

 uninjured/' From Liverpool the Savannah steamed to St. Pe- 

 tersburg, where it aroused the curiosity of the Czar, and attracted 

 great attention. The log book and cylinder of the vessel are at 

 present on exhibition in London. Charleston secured in 1827 the 

 first railway charter granted in the South for the South Carolina 

 Railroad ; and when a few years later it was completed to a point 

 on the Savannah River, opposite Augusta, called Hamburg, it 

 was one hundred and thirty-six miles in length, and the longest 

 line of railway at that time in the world. The directors of this 

 road determined as early as November, 1829, to make steam the 

 sole motive power, which had not then been adopted elsewhere in 

 America, and the first locomotive constructed in the United States, 

 which was called the " Best Friend," was planned for this road 

 by E. L. Miller, of Charleston. The South Carolina Railroad was 

 the first steam railway to carry the United States mail, and the 

 system of double-truck running gear, including the application 

 of pedestals to the springs, which was later on copied by all the 

 railroads, was instituted by Horatio Allen, their engineer. Strenu- 

 ous efforts were made in the South in the way of railway construc- 

 tion, but in a sparsely settled section the rate of increased mile- 

 age naturally fell far short of that in the more densely populated 

 North. The inscription on the bust of Robert Y. Hayne, in 

 Charleston, records that " his last public service was his effort to 

 open direct communication with the vast interior of our conti- 

 nent." " Next to the Christian religion," said Hayne, " I know 

 of nothing to be compared with the influence of a free social and 

 commercial intercourse in softening asperities, extending knowl- 

 edge, and promoting human happiness." He might at this par- 

 ticular period have named one thing more potent even than rail- 

 ways in uniting the different sections of the country namely, the 



