Page:Inland Transit - Cundy - 1834.djvu/36

, by superseding the necessity of heaping the inhabitants together, story upon story, within a confined space; and by enabling the town population to spread itself over a larger extent of surface, without incurring the inconvenience of distance. Let those who discard speculations like these as wild and improbable, recur to the state of public opinion, at no very remote period, on the subject of steam navigation. Within the memory of persons who have not yet passed the meridian of life, the possibility of traversing by the steam-engine the channels and seas that surround and intersect these islands, was regarded as the dream of enthusiasts. Nautical men and men of science rejected such speculations with equal incredulity, and with little less than scorn for the understanding of those who could for a moment entertain them. Yet we have witnessed steam-engines traversing, not these channels and seas alone, but sweeping the face of the waters round every coast in Europe, and even ploughing the great oceans of the world. If steam be not used as the only means of connecting the most distant habitable points of our planct, it is not because it is inadequate to the accomplishment of that end, but because local and accidental causes limit the supply of that material from which at the present moment it derives its powers. But that power is at this moment being accomplished: a steam packet of 1000 tons burthen is now building at New York, to be propelled by an engine of 260 horse power, with double paddles, designed as a passage vessel between New York and Liverpool, and to carry 1000 passengers every trip, a distance of about 3500 miles across the Atlantic, in twelve days, without regard to wind, weather, or tides, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, this may be considered a floating island.