Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/466

450 Fig. 47 exhibits a sketch, reëngraved from a French work, which illustrates at once another of Fitch's steamboats and the Gallic artist's idea of the flora on the banks of the Delaware.

Fitch, while urging the importance and the advantages of his plan, confidently stated his belief that the ocean would soon be



crossed by steam-vessels, and that the navigation of the Mississippi would also become exclusively a steam-navigation.

Fitch's boat, when tried at Philadelphia, was found capable of making eight miles an hour. It was laid up in 1792.

85. In 1788 Patrick Miller, James Taylor, and William Symmington, attached a steam-engine to a boat with paddle-wheels, which had been built by the first-named, and tried it for the first time on Dalswinton Lake, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

This boat, having attained a speed of five miles an hour, another was constructed (Fig. 48), and was tried in 1789. This vessel was



driven by an engine of twelve-horse power, and made seven miles an hour. This result, encouraging as it was, led to no further immediate action, the funds of the experimenters having failed.