110 
American Implement.^, and 
is visited yearly by thousands of Englishmen for the purposes of 
business, in the pursuit of pleasure, or the search for a home, it 
might be reasonably supposed that all points of interest observable 
on that great continent, and especially among those energetic kins- 
men of ours who occupy the northern part of it, would have been 
ere this fully reviewed, and have left an utterly exhausted field for 
the descriptive powers of the present race of travellers. And, 
indeed, we cannot complain of any lack of works purporting to 
enlighten the British public with regard to this interesting 
country and people, from the grave and circumstantial journal 
which records, as in a ledger, every act of the tourist's life, to the 
light and graphic sketch of " our own correspondent." But 
whilst each feature of the soil and climate of the United States, 
her staples, her political institutions, and social condition, have 
been again and again described and discussed — whilst many an 
ingenious and interesting essay has been written on those great 
problems of life and morals which are there being worked out 
for the instruction and imitation or the warning of mankind, 
there is one subject which has been but cursorily touched on even 
in those works which more particularly dwell on the economical 
progress, the agriculture, and other industrial pursuits of America ; 
and this, perhaps, in consequence of its dry and matter-of-fact 
character leading it to be regarded as of little interest to the 
general reader; — I mean the subject of the labour-saving contriv- 
ances which form so peculiar a feature of domestic and social 
life there. And yet that subject is one of great and growing 
importance to ourselves, and of still higher moment to those 
colonies of ours which are placed in a similar condition to the 
United States with respect to the labour question. For with 
them, as with the United States, the great problem is how to 
subdue nature to their purposes, and to wrest fiom her those 
fruits which are suited to the wants of man. 
Now, in America, that which must strike the observing traveller 
with most astonishment, is the vast amount of work that has been 
achieved — of forest cleared, of wilderness reclaimed, of roads 
and railroads constructed — and the magnitude and splendour of 
the cities that have been built by so scanty a population in so 
brief a period of time. For let us enumerate a few of the marvels 
of American progress. In the three-quarters of a century that 
have elapsed since the conclusion of the War of Independence, 
they have overspread a territory little inferior to all Europe 
in extent, have dug 5000 miles of canals, constructed J G,000 
miles of railways, and built some half-dozen towns rivalling 
in size and surpassing in magnificence any of the cities of England, 
London alone excepted. Tliey have formed a mercantile marine 
not inftTior to our own, when their lake and river, as well as 
ocean tonnage, is included in the comparison ; they begin to rival 
