him, looked coldly on, barely listening to his elucidations, and receiving them with an indifference that chilled him to the heart. By a perseverance as unwearied as it was unrewarded, his darling project was at length sufficiently matured, and a steam boat was seen floating at the wharves of Philadelphia, forty years ago. So far, his success amid the most mortifying discouragements, had been sufficient to prove the merit of the scheme. But a reverse awaited him, as discouraging as it was unexpected. The boat porformed a trip to Burlington; a distance of twenty miles, when, as she was rounding at the wharf, the boiler burst. The next tide floated her back to the city; where, after great difficulty, a new boiler was procured. In October, 1788, she again performed her trip to Burlington. The boat not only went to Burlington, but to Trenton, returning the same day; and moving at the rate of eight miles an hour. It is true, she could hardly perform a trip without something breaking, not from any error in Fitch's designs or conceptions, but, at that time, our mechanics were very ordinary, and it was impossible to have machinery, so new and complex, made with exactness and competent skill. It was on this account that Fitch was obliged to abandon the great invention on which the public looked coldly; from these failures, and because what is now so easy, then seemed to be impracticable, the boat was laid up as useless, and rotted silently and unnoticed in the docks of Kensington. Fitch became more embarrassed by his creditors than ever; and, after producing three manuscript volumes, which he deposited in the Philadelphia Library, to be

opened thirty years after his death, he died and was buried near the Ohio. Such was the unfortunate termination of this early conceived project of the steam boat. Fitch was no doubt an original inventor of the steam boat. He was certainly the first that ever applied steam to the propulsion of vessels in America. Though it was reserved to Fulton to advance its application to a degree of perfection which has made his name immortal; yet to the unfortunate Fitch belongs the honour of completing and navigating the first American steam

boat.

His three manuscript volumes were opened about three years ago. Although they exhibit him an unschooled man, yet they indicate the possession of a strong mind, of much mechanical ingenuity. He describes his many difficulties and disappointments with a degree of feeling which cannot fail to win the sympathy of every reader, causing him to wonder and regret that so much time and talent should have been so unprofitably devoted. Though the project failed, and it failed only for want of funds, yet he never for a moment doubted its practicability. He tells us that in less than a century we shall see our western rivers swarming with steam boats; and that his darling wish is to be buried on the margin of the romantic Ohio, where the song of the boatmen may sometimes penetrate into the stillness of his everlasting resting place, and the music of the steam engine echo over the sod that shelters him for ever.

In one of his journals, there is this touching and prophetic sentiment-" the day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my inven

tion; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do any thing worthy of attention!" I do not know that I have his precise words, but the sentiment is what I have given. The truth is, that Fitch, like Robert Morris, lived thirty or forty years too soon; they were ahead of the condition of their country; these great projects of improvements, which we now see consummated, were beyond the means of the country to execute them, and were therefore thought visionary and extravagant. Public opinion has since become better instructed, and the increase of wealth has enabled us to do what had been thought impossible.

As remembered to the eye, when a boy, when seen in motion Fitch's boat was graceful, and "walked the water like a thing of life." His predilection for watchmaking machinery was very manifest, for two or three ranges of chains of the same construction as in watches, were seen along the outside of his vessel from stem to stern, moving with burnished glare, in motion proportioned to the speed of the boat; and ornamenting the waist, not unlike the adornments about an Indian bride.

It is melancholy to contemplate his overwhelming disappointments in a case since proved so practicable and so productive to those concerned. Some of those thousands so useless to others, had they been owned by him, so as to have enabled him to make all the experiments and improvements his inventive mind suggested, would have set his care-crazed head at rest, and in time have rewarded his exertions. But for want of the impulse which money affords, all proved ineffective. "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed!"

After Fulton and Livingston had proved the practicability of a better invention, by their boat on the North river, the waters of the Delaware were again agitated by a steam vessel, called the Phoenix. She was first started in 1809, and being since worn out, her remains, with those of Fitch's boat, repose in the mud flats of Kensington. The Phoenix, then deemed the ne plus ultra of the art, won the admiration of all of her early day; but as "practice makes perfect," it was quickly discovered that better adaptations of power could be attained, and although she underwent many changes in her machinery and gear, she soon saw herself rivalled, and finally surpassed, by successive inventions, till now, the steam boats can accomplish in two hours what sometimes took six to perform in her. For instance, the Phoenix has been known to take six hours in reaching Burlington against the wind and tide.

Such too, was the rapid progress in steam invention, that Mr. Latrobe. who wrote a paper for the Philosophical Society to demonstrate the impossibility of a momentum such as we now witness, became himself in two years afterwards a proselyte to the new system, and proved his sincerity and conviction, by becoming the agent for the steam companies in the West!

CONCLUSION.

WE have thus endeavoured to lead the minds of our youths to the contemplation of those events, which transpired in this their native land, in the rustic days of their forefathers. We hope their feelings and interest have grown with the subject, and that they have at least felt an increase of veneration and regard for those progenitors who procured for them so fine a country, advancing, as it still does, with numberless blessings.

To a mind fully imbued with a sense of the scenes and the facts that are past, there is ever at hand a ready means to recreate "the ideal presence," and to enable the imagination to get into the company of the ancientsthere to talk and think with "men of other days."

A mind fully alive to the facts connected with our early history, can hardly ride along the highway, or traverse our fields and woods, without feeling the frequent presence of thoughts like these, to wit:-Here lately prowled the beasts of prey,-there crowded the deep interminable woodland shade,-through that cripple browsed the deer, in that rude cluster of rocks and roots were sheltered the American rattlesnake. These rich meadows were noxious swamps,—on those sun-side hills of golden grain crackled the growing maize of the tawny aborigines. Where we stand to pause, or where we dwell-rest perhaps the ashes of a chief who once had his favourite home on the same site. On yon pathway, seen in the distant view, climbing the remote hills,