poverty. Among those who inspected the vessel while at
work were Fulton, the American artist, and Henry Bell, the Glasgow
engineer. The former had already occupied himself with model
steamboats, both at Paris and in London; and in 1805 he obtained from
Boulton and Watt, of Birmingham, the steam-engine required for
propelling his paddle steamboat on the Hudson. The Clermont was first
started in August, 1807, and attained a speed of nearly five miles an
hour. Five years later, Henry Bell constructed and tried his first
steamer on the Clyde.

It was not until 1815 that the first steamboat was seen on the Thames.
This was the Richmond packet, which plied between London and Richmond.
The vessel was fitted with the first marine engine Henry Maudslay ever
made. During the same year, the Margery, formerly employed on the
Firth of Forth, began plying between Gravesend and London; and the
Thames, formerly the Argyll, came round from the Clyde, encountering
rough seas, and making the voyage of 758 miles in five days and two
hours. This was thought extraordinarily rapid--though the voyage of
about 3000 miles, from Liverpool to New York, can now be made in only
about two days' more time.

In nearly all seagoing vessels, the Paddle has now almost entirely
given place to the Screw. It was long before this invention was
perfected and brought into general use. It was not the production of
one man, but of several generations of mechanical inventors. A
perfected invention does not burst forth from the brain like a poetic
thought or a fine resolve. It has to be initiated, laboured over, and
pursued in the face of disappointments, difficulties, and
discouragements.

Sometimes the idea is born in one generation, followed out in the next,
and perhaps perfected in the third. In an age of progress, one
invention merely paves the way for another. What was the wonder of
yesterday, becomes the common and unnoticed thing of to-day.

The first idea of the screw was thrown out by James Watt more than a
century ago. Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham, had proposed to move
canal boats by means of the steam-engine; and Dr. Small, his friend,
was in communication with James Watt, then residing at Glasgow, on the
subject. In a letter from Watt to Small, dated the 30th September,
1770, the former, after speaking of the condenser, and saying that it
cannot be dispensed with, proceeds: "Have you ever considered a spiral
oar for that purpose [pr