died at last on his native soil penniless and heartbroken. To thousands of travelers floating down the Ohio River past Marietta and this island, the deserted rendezvous of treason, has the pathetic tale of poor Blennerhassett been made familiar.

Nor, tho released from legal durance, did the chief offender himself escape the Nemesis of public condemnation. Less an object of compassion than Blennerhassett, Burr wandered abroad a few years, living upon scanty remittances from personal friends; but in 1812 returned stealthily to New York City, confirmed in sensual and impecunious habits. None of his former high acquaintances either molesting or greeting him, he slunk back into professional practise, confined for the rest of his life, with all his astuteness, to the grade of a pettifogger. His only child, to whom he had promised a diadem, the beloved Theodosia, lost at sea, and his line extinct, Burr was left without an endearing tie in the world; yet a stoic still, through all the vicissitudes of life, he lived to the age of fourscore, the obscurity of his Bohemian existence varied only by the scandal of a marriage at seventy-eight to a rich widow, who soon after separated from him. Over the fair sex Burr's fascination was retained to the last; one woman, strange to his illustrious kindred, nursed him in last sickness, and another placed a simple block of marble to mark his unhonored grave.

* Madame Jumel, widow of Stephen Jumel. The marriage took place in the Jumel house, near High Bridge, New York City, which had been Washington's headquarter during his stay on Manhattan Island in the Revolution, The house is still standing; it was built by Roger Morris, an English army officer, as the home of himself and his wife, Mary Philipse.

FULTON'S SUCCESS WITH HIS

STEAMBOAT

(1807)

I

AN ACCOUNT BY JAMES RENWICK1

No

All those who projected the application of steam to vessels before 1786 may be excluded, without ceremony, from the list of those entitled to compete with Fulton for the honors of invention. one, indeed, could have seen the powerful action of a pumping-engine without being convinced that the energy, which was applied so successfully to that single purpose, might be made applicable to many others; but those who entertained a belief that the original atmospheric engine, or even the single-acting engine of Watt, could be applied to propel boats by paddle-wheels showed a total ignorance of mechanical principles. This is more particularly the case with all those whose projects bore the strongest resemblance to the plan which Fulton afterward carried successfully into effect. Those who approached most nearly to the attainment of success were they who were farthest removed from the plan of Fulton. His application

1 Renwick was a native of England (born in 1790), who settled in New York, where he became a noted physicist, and published several books on scientific topics, including a "Treatise on the Steam Engine." He also wrote biographies of Fulton and Livingston.

was founded on the properties of Watt's doubleacting engine, and could not have been used at all until that instrument of universal application had received the last finish of its inventor.

In this list of failures, from proposing to do what the instrument they employed was incapable of performing, we do not hesitate to include Savary, Papin, Jonathan Hulls, Perier, the Marquis de Jouffroy, and all the other names of earlier date than 1786, whom the jealousy of the French and English nations has drawn from oblivion for the purpose of contesting the priority of Fulton's claims. The only competitor whom they might have brought forward with some shadow of plausibility is Watt himself. No sooner had that illustrious inventor completed his double-acting engine than he saw at a glance the vast field of its application. Navigation and locomotion were not omitted; but, living in an inland town, and in a country possessing no rivers of importance, his views were limited to canals alone. In this direction he saw an immediate objection to the use of any apparatus of which so powerful an agent as his engine would be the mover; for it was clear that the injury which would be done to the banks of the canal would prevent the possibility of its introduction. Watt, therefore, after having conceived the idea of a steamboat, laid it aside as unlikely to be of any practical value.

The idea of applying steam to navigation was not confined to Europe. Numerous Americans entertained hopes of attaining the same object, but, before 1786, with the same want of any reasonable hopes of success. Their fruitless projects were, however, rebuked by Franklin, who,

reasoning upon the capabilities of the engine in its original form, did not hesitate to declare all their schemes impracticable.

Among those who, before the completion of Watts' invention, attempted the structure of steamboats, must be named with praise Fitch and Rumsey. They, unlike those whose names have been cited, were well aware of the real difficulties which they were to overcome; and both were the authors of plans which, if the engine had been incapable of further improvement, might have had a partial and limited success. Fitch's trial was made in 1783, and Rumsey's in 1787. The latter date is subsequent to Watt's double-acting engine; but, as the project consisted merely in pumping in water to be afterward forced out at the stern, the single-acting engine was probably employed. Evans, whose engine might have answered the purpose, was employed in the daily business of a millwright, and, altho he might at any time have driven these competitors from the field, took no steps to apply his dormant invention.

Fitch, who had watched the graceful and rapid way of the Indian pirogue, saw in the oscillating

2 The scene of one of Fitch's trials was the Collect Pond in New York City, long since filled in. About it now rise the Tombs Prison and the Criminal Court Building. Chancellor Livingston furnished the capital by means of which Fulton was able to proceed with his work, and became his partner in the enterprise. Had John Fitch been equally fortunate as to a partner, it is not unlikely that his name, instead of Fulton's, would now be associated with the successful construction of the steamboat. "The day will come,' said Fitch, in his pathetic autobiography, "when some more powerful man will get fame and wealth from my invention, but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."

motion of the old pumping-engine the means of impelling paddles in a manner similar to that given them by the human arm. This idea is extremely ingenious, and was applied in a simple and beautiful manner; but the engine was yet too feeble and cumbrous to yield an adequate force; and, when it received its great improvement from Watt, a more efficient mode of propulsion became practicable, and must have superseded Fitch's paddles had they even come into general

use.

In the latter stages of Fitch's investigations he became aware of the value of Watt's double-acting engine, and refers to it as a valuable addition to his means of success; but it does not appear to have occurred to him that, with this improved power, methods of far greater efficiency than those to which he had been limited before this invention was completed had now become practicable.

When the properties of Watt's double-acting engine became known to the public an immediate attempt was made to apply it to navigation. This was done by Miller, of Dalswinton, who employed Symington as his engineer. Miller seems to have been its real author; for, as early as 1787, he published his belief that boats might be propelled by employing a steam-engine to turn the paddlewheels. It was not until 1791 that Symington completed a model for him, of a size sufficient for a satisfactory experiment. If we may credit the evidence which has since been adduced, the experiment was as successful as the first attempts of Fulton; but it did not give to the inventor that degree of confidence which was necessary to in duce him to embark his fortune in the enterprise.