The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

6 THE STEAM PACKET, reap any benefit from his undertaking. When he returned to his native land in 1796, he found that a M. de Blanc, an artist of Trevoux, had obtained a patent for the construction of a steam-boat; and at the same time the celebrated Fulton was making zs experiments near the Isle des Cygnes. In the meantime some similar attempts to reduce a grand theory to practice, had been made in England. In 1794, a Mr. Miller, of Dals- winton, built a steam-vessel; but he does not appear to have been very successful in his experiments. In 1801 another steam-vessel was built by a Mr. Symington; and this vessel ran upon the Forth and Clyde. For some reason with which we are not acquainted, although the published excuse was the injury done to the banks of the canal by the agitation of the water, the experiments were not continued for any | length of time. Fulton, however, succeeded in introducing his disco- veries to the world; and from that period the practice of applying steam to the navigation of vessels has not only become general in all the civilised maritime nations, but has been brought to a rare state of perfection. To what wonderful results, then, does the ingenuity of man conduct him,—from the osier-built canoe, covered with skins, which we noticed at the commencement of this chapter, to the noble steam-ship, which is to form the subject of the ensuing pages! And, again, how won- derful appears that combination, to form one grand structure, of so many various niaterials, all originally in such rude conditions, and bearing so little analogy with each other! ‘The acorn is sown—the oak springs up, and the timber for the vessel is procured from the forest ;— the hemp waves in the fields—the iron and copper are profoundly imbedded ‘in the earth—and the tar is sealed up in the lofty pine ;— and yet each and all of these are, by the skill of man, called into use, and, by his power, so united that the vast floating feohene” called a SHIP is the magnificent result. Gomichbooks (E{0)