nomical than horses. Nevertheless eight years passed before another
locomotive railway was constructed and opened for the purposes of coal or
other traffic.

Stephenson had no means of bringing his important invention prominently
under the notice of the public. He himself knew well its importance, and
he already anticipated its eventual general adoption; but being an
unlettered man, he could not give utterance to the thoughts which brooded
within him on the subject. Killingworth Colliery lay far from London,
the centre of scientific life in England. It was visited by no savans
nor literary men, who might have succeeded in introducing to notice the
wonderful machine of Stephenson. Even the local chroniclers seem to have
taken no notice of the Killingworth Railway.

There seemed, indeed, to be so small a prospect of introducing the
locomotive into general use, that Stephenson,--perhaps feeling the
capabilities within him,--again recurred to his old idea of emigrating to
the United States. Before joining Mr. Burrel as partner in a small
foundry at Forth Banks, Newcastle, he had thrown out to him the
suggestion that it would be a good speculation for them to emigrate to
North America, and introduce steamboats upon the great inland lakes
there. The first steamers were then plying upon the Tyne before his
eyes; and he saw in them the germ of a great revolution in navigation.
It occurred to him that North America presented the finest field for
trying their wonderful powers. He was an engineer, his partner was an
iron-founder; and between them he thought they might strike out a path to
fortune in the mighty West. Fortunately, this idea remained a mere
speculation so far as Stephenson was concerned: and it was left to others
to do what he had dreamt of achieving. After all his patient waiting,
his skill, industry, and perseverance were at length about to bear fruit.

In 1819 the owners of the Hetton Colliery, in the county of Durham,
determined to have their waggon-way altered to a locomotive railroad.
The result of the working of the Killingworth Railway had been so
satisfactory, that they resolved to adopt the same system. One reason
why an experiment so long continued and so successful as that at
Killingworth should have been so slow in producing results, perhaps was,
that to lay down a railway and furnish it with locomotives, or fixed
engines where necessary, required a very large capital, beyond the means
of or