of New Jersey the right to navigate its waters for a term
of years. With this a stock company was formed and the first boat built
and rebuilt. At first it was propelled by a single paddle at the stem;
then by a series of paddles attached to an endless chain on each side of
the boat; afterwards by paddle-wheels, and finally by upright oars at the
side. The first test made on the Delaware River in August, 1787--twenty
years before Fulton--in the presence of many distinguished citizens, some
of them members of the Federal Convention, which had adjourned for the
purpose, was completely successful. The boiler burst before the afternoon
was over, but not before the inventor had demonstrated the complete
practicability of his invention.

For ten years, struggling the while against cruel poverty, John Fitch
labored to perfect his steamboat, and to force it upon the public favor,
but in vain. Never in the history of invention did a new device more fully
meet the traditional "long-felt want." Here was a growing nation made up
of a fringe of colonies strung along an extended coast. No roads were
built. Dense forests blocked the way inland but were pierced by navigable
streams, deep bays, and placid sounds. The steamboat was the one thing
necessary to cement American unity and speed American progress; but a full
quarter of a century passed after Fitch had steamed up and down the
Delaware before the new system of propulsion became commercially useful.
The inventor did not live to see that day, and was at least spared the
pain of seeing a later pioneer get credit for a discovery he thought his
own. In 1798 he died--of an overdose of morphine--leaving behind the
bitter writing: "The day will come when some powerful man will get fame
and riches from my invention; but nobody will ever believe that poor John
Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."

In trying to make amends for the long injustice done to poor Fitch, modern
history has come near to going beyond justice. It is undoubted that Fitch
applied steam to the propulsion of a boat, long before Fulton, but that
Fitch himself was the first inventor is not so certain. Blasco de Garay
built a rude steamboat in Barcelona in 1543; in Germany one Papin built
one a few years later, which bargemen destroyed lest their business be
injured by it. Jonathan Hulls, of Liverpool, in 1737 built a
stern-wheeler, rude engravings of which are still in existence, and
Symington in 1801 built a thor