dered and the improvement in the general welfare, gradually converted
the people; and the day at length arrived when, with the exception of a
few wiseacres, every one admired "Lethierry's Galley."

It would probably win less admiration now-a-days. This steamboat of
forty years since would doubtless provoke a smile among our modern
boat-builders; for this marvel was ill-shaped; this prodigy was clumsy
and infirm.

The distance between our grand Atlantic steam-vessels of the present day
and the boats with wheel-paddles which Denis Papin floated on the Fulda
in 1707, is not greater than that between a three-decker, like the
_Montebello_, 200 feet long, having a mainyard of 115 feet, carrying a
weight of 3000 tons, 1100 men, 120 guns, 10,000 cannon-balls, and 160
packages of canister, belching forth at every broadside, when in action,
3300 pounds of iron, and spreading to the wind, when it moves, 5600
square metres of canvas, and the old Danish galley of the second
century, discovered, full of stone hatchets, and bows and clubs, in the
mud of the seashore, at Wester-Satrup, and preserved at the Hotel de
Ville at Flensburg.

Exactly one hundred years--from 1707 to 1807--separate the first
paddle-boat of Papin from the first steamboat of Fulton. "Lethierry's
Galley" was assuredly a great improvement upon those two rough sketches;
but it was itself only a sketch. For all that, it was a masterpiece in
its way. Every scientific discovery in embryo presents that double
aspect--a monster in the foetus, a marvel in the germ.

V

THE DEVIL BOAT

"Lethierry's Galley" was not masted with a view to sailing well; a fact
which was not a defect; it is, indeed, one of the laws of naval
construction. Besides, her motive power being steam, her sails were only
accessory. A paddle steamboat, moreover, is almost insensible to sails.
The new steam-vessel was too short, round, and thick-set. She had too
much bow, and too great a breadth of quarter. The daring of inventors
had not yet reached the point of making a steam-vessel light;
Lethierry's boat had some of the defects of Gilliatt's Dutch sloop. She
pitched very little, but she rolled a good deal. Her paddle-boxes were
too high. She had too much beam for her length. The massive machinery
encumbered her, and to make her capable of carrying a heavy cargo, her
constructors had raised her bulwarks to an unusual height, giving to the
vessel the defects of old seventy-fours, a bastar