Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/584

488 of a civil and obliging nature)." He died 3 April, 1667. In his remarkable book he anticipated the power of steam, and indeed may be said to have invented the first steam engine. His object in his steam-fountain was to throw up or raise water to a great height. His words are as follows: "This admirable method which I propose of raising water by the force of fire has no bounds if the vessels be strong enough; for I have taken a cannon, and having filled it three-fourths full of water and shut up its muzzle and touch-hole, and exposed it to the fire for twenty-four hours, it burst with a great explosion. Having afterwards discovered a method of fortifying vessels internally, and combined them in such a way that they filled and acted alternately, I have made the water spout in an uninterrupted stream forty feet high, and one vessel of rarefied water raised 40 of cold water. The person who conducted the operation had nothing to do but turn two cocks, so that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force, and then to fill itself with cold water, and so on in succession." By means of his contrivance he proposed "not only with little charge to drain all sorts of mines, and furnish cities with water, though never so high seated, as well as to keep them sweet, running through several streets, and so performing the work of scavengers, as well as furnishing the inhabitants with sufficient water for their private occasions, but likewise supply rivers with sufficient to maintain and make them portable from town to town, and for the bettering of lands all the way it runs, with many more advantageous and yet greater effects, of profits, admiration, and consequence so that deservedly I deem this invention to crown my labours, to reward my expenses, and make my thoughts acquiesce in the way of further inventions."