298 Securities against Fire, &c. 
10. We now come to the last of those of our articles which regard 
merely the “collection of water ;” and it will be very brief, for it 
relates solely to the more frequent use of solid poles to assist the 
descent of water from roofs. I have only to state here that as hollow 
pipes are subject to have water frozen within them, which is an in- 
convenience in the winter season, solid poles may in various instances, 
be more useful for the above purpose, than hollow tubes. 
Here then shall be finished what I shall term my interlocutory ar- 
tucles on the subject of “the collection of water.” 
11. We now return to the case of conflagrations in dwellings ; but 
they are dwellings of a new description of which we have now to 
speak ; for under this head it will be found, that we may include 
steam boats ; and especially those employed in close waters, but with- 
out forgetting altogether steam boats in open seas. 
The Chinese, it is well known, have villages and towns compos- 
ed entirely of large covered boats; that is, of inhabited tenements, 
which have not only the property of floating, but of being transfer- 
red, from place to place, on the surface of the water. T'ravelling steam 
boats, carrying passengers and goods, (such as move up and down 
many rivers in the United States), may be considered then, in effect, 
as moving taverns, with a huge ware house annexed ; and the whole 
of this vast combination is subject to the most terrible disasters from 
fire ; which fire, whether it arises from one part of the combination 
or another, generally ends in the common ruin of the whole; espe- 
cially if the water which the steam boats are traversing, is able to 
lend its aid in rendering the disaster still more complicated. 
It is the object of this article to treat of the whole of this mass of 
evils briefly, in order to find (as far as may be,) what are the means 
of prevention or of cure which may be adopted respecting it. 
In close waters, it will be proper as a first step, to remove the ma- 
chinery of the steam engine wholly out of the carrying vessel, and 
place it in a small separate vessel of its own; which indeed was the 
atory is wanting for completing any thing in the organized part of creation, such a 
laboratory is always provided ; and mechanical laws also are resorted to, as well as 
chemical laws, if requisite for accomplishing a given purpose.—In short, in all around 
us we see evidence both of unity and of variety, of knowledge and of efficiency ; 
Human science however being often unable to decipher what is thus exhibited to 
its view, till the study of successive ages has been employed in unyeiling the se- 
cret. So great is the Creator, so little is man! 
