r showing the unfitness of Mr. Watt's low
pressure steam engine for locomotive purposes, Mr. Galloway, more than
fifty years ago, wrote: "We have made these remarks in this place in
order to set at rest the title of Mr. Watt to the invention of steam
carriages. And, taking for our rule that the party who first attempted
them in practice by mechanical arrangements of his own is entitled to
the reputation of being their inventor, Mr. Oliver Evans, of America,
appears to us to be the person to whom that honor is due." He is the
same Oliver Evans whom the _Mechanics' Magazine_, of London, the
leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its
number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the
competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel,
Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

In that trial the company's engines developed about 15 miles in an
hour, and spurts of still higher speed. The _Magazine_ points to the
results of the trial, and then, under the heading of "The First
Projector of Steam Traveling," it declares that all that had been
accomplished had been anticipated and its feasibility practically
exemplified over a quarter of a century before by Oliver Evans, an
American citizen. The _Magazine_ showed that many years before the
trial Mr. Evans had offered to furnish steam carriages that, on level
railways, should run at the rate of 300 miles in a day, or he would
not ask pay therefor. The writer will state that this offer by Mr.
Evans was made in November, 1812, at which date not a British steam
carriage had yet accomplished seven miles in an hour.

In 1809 Mr. Evans endeavored to establish a steam railway both for
freight and passenger traffic between New York and Philadelphia,
offering to invest $500 per mile in the enterprise. At the date of his
effort there was not a railway in the world over ten miles long, nor
does there appear to have been another human being who up to that date
had entertained even the thought of a steam railway for passenger and
freight traffic. In view of all this, is it at all surprising that the
British _Mechanics' Magazine_ declared Oliver Evans, an American, to
be the first projector of steam railway traveling? In 1804 Mr. Evans
made a most noteworthy demonstration, his object being to practically
exemplify that locomotion could be imparted by his high pressure steam
engine to both carriages and boats, and the r