axletrees, for this temporary purpose, in a very rough manner, and with great friction, of course; yet, with this small engine, I transported my great burden to the Schuylkill with ease; and when it was launched in the water, I fixed a paddle-wheel in the stern, and drove it down the Schuylkill to the Delaware, and up the Delaware to the city (14 or 15 miles), leaving all the vessels going up behind me, at least half way, the wind being ahead, and in the presence of thousands of spectatorsa sight which I supposed would have convinced them of the practicability of both steam carriages and steam boats. But in this I was sadly disappointed; for they made no allowance for the disproportion of the engine to its great load, nor for the temporary manner in which it was fixed, nor the great friction, ill form of the boat, &c., but supposed it was the utmost I could do." Mr. Evans here remarks-and with natural and excusable chagrin at the same time casting a very just censure upon the want of energy and speculative spirit of the wealthy inhabitants of Philadelpha: "Had I been patronised, as Mr. Fulton was by the State of New-York, with the exclusive right for thirty years, and by a Mr. Livingston with thirty thousand dollars, to make the experiment, I might have showed steam boats in full operation long before Mr. Fulton began his boat, which was finished in 1807, twenty years after I petitioned the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and three years after the above mentioned experiment." Mr. Evans entertained many ideas which, in his day, were thought almost evidences of insanity, but we see that his wildest schemes either have already been or are now being carried into execution. Thus, locomotive engines are travelling at a rate of sixty miles an hour, and Perkins has raised the pressure of steam to a degree far exceeding the pressure or elasticity of ignited gunpowder. His, however, were not all speculative theories even in his own day, as the following will fully show: "The principles are now in practice, driving a saw-mill at Mauchack's, on the Mississippi; two at Natchez, one of which is capable of sawing 5,000 feet of boards in twelve hours; a mill at Pittsburgh, able to grind twenty bushels of grain per hour; one at Marietta, of equal powers; one at Lexington, Ky., of the same powers; one, a paper-mill, of the same; one of one-fourth the power, at Pittsburgh; one at the same place of three and a half times the power, for the forge, and for rolling and splitting sheet iron; one of the power of twenty-four horses, at Middletown, Conn., driving the machinery of a cloth manufactory; two at Philadelphia, of five or six horses; and many making for different purposes: the principle applying to all purposes where power is wanted." We will now close our notice of this enthusiastic and ingenious inventor with a few of his predictions in 1813: 1. "The time will come, when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly-fifteen or twenty miles an hour. 2. "A carriage will set out from Washington in the morning; the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New-York the same day. "To accomplish this, two sets of rail-ways will be laid, travelled by night as well as by day, and the passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do in steam stage boats. 3. "A steam engine, consuming from a quarter to a half cord of wood, will drive a carriage 180 miles in twelve hours, with twenty or thirty passengers, and will not consume six gallons of water. 4. "These engines will drive boats ten or twelve miles per hour, and there will be many hundred steam boats on the Mississippi, * and other western waters, as prophesied thirty years ago. * Mr. Evans lived to know, that in 1813, there were three steam boats on the Mississippi; and recent information gives the number as over 1,000 vessels; most of which have been built at Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and Cincinnati. |