of Steam-Navigation. 
93 
to add, that, by this time, my father, in the prosecution of his 
various schemes of a purely public nature, and without the 
slightest chance or expectation of reimbursement, had expended 
towards £ 30,000 ; and being by this time ardently engaged 
in agricultural pursuits, his attention was more easily turned 
from the objects of his former speculations, than those ac- 
quainted with his character would have been prepared to anti- 
cipate. 
Be that as it may, it cannot be disputed, in point of fact, 
that he had fully established the practicability of propelling 
vessels, of any size, by means of wheels or revolving paddles, 
and of adapting to these the almost boundless powers of the 
steam-engine. In the way of pure invention nothing farther 
remained to be achieved, although, in the subordinate details 
of execution, great room remained for minor improvements. 
Of my father’s peculiar and undoubted merits as an inven- 
tor, I have endeavoured to give a fair and unvarnished ac- 
count ; and of the reality of that invention, as carried into ac- 
tual practice in the years 1788 and 1789, no demonstration 
more unequivocal can be desired than that, with his few, but 
most satisfactory, experiments, the prosecution of this most 
momentous discovery remained suspended, for many years, in 
a state of inactivity and neglect, till, at a period comparatively 
recent, it was revived in America and in this country, by persons 
who can be proved to have derived their first lights from the 
experiments at Dalswinton and at Carron. On that subject I 
am in possession of ample evidence ; but, at present, I have 
felt no other desire than to record the facts immediately con- 
nected with my father’s operations, and to establish the priori- 
ty of his claims to the credit of having originated, and carried 
into practical execution, an improvement in the nautical art, 
by far the most important of which the present age has to 
boast, and the ultimate effects of which, on the future inter- 
course of mankind, the most sanguine imagination would at- 
tempt in vain to predict. 
