history. On the great streams of the West flatboats floated
for weeks, laden with the productions of the States, on their way to
a market, where days or hours are sufficient at the present time.
Between the metropolis of the nation and the capital of New York,
the sloops, which were the only means of communication by water,
required an average of four days to make the trip of about one
hundred and fifty miles, while to-day it is accomplished in half a
day or less.

Now all the navigable rivers of the country are alive with
steamboats, and the growth and development of the States have been
mainly indebted to the introduction of steam navigation. On the
great lakes, though more available for transportation by means of
sailing vessels, the same powerful agency has achieved wonders, and
all of them are now covered by lines of steamers, by which, either
as tow-boats or independent vessels, a large proportion of the
inland commerce of the nation is carried on. On the ocean the result
of the introduction of steam-navigation is even more impressive, and
nations separated by thousands of miles of rolling billows now join
hands, as it were, with hearts commercially united, if not more
intimately, through the medium of peace-giving commerce, of which
thousands of gigantic steamers are the angel-messengers. On the
Atlantic a score or more of them leave the one side for the other
every week, and at the present time a merchant may breakfast in New
York on Saturday, and dine in London the next Saturday.

It is now conceded, both in Europe and America, that the world is
indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to
the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by
others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of
the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was
"the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an
English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea
which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who
wellnigh sacrificed his own life in its improvement, and who
achieved the crowning glory of its utility, he is certainly entitled
to be regarded and honored as the Father of Steam-Navigation.

Robert Fulton was born in a small village near Lancaster, in the
State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1765. He was the son of a poor
man of Scotch-Irish descent, who died when his son was only three
years old. He obtai