och favorable above all others for
securing a large portion of the produce of the western settlements, and
of the fur and peltry of the Lakes, also."

From that day forward, scarcely a week passed without some new
development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the means of
navigation. Among the scores of men who engaged in this engrossing but
discouraging work, there is one whom the world is coming to honor more
highly than in previous years--John Fitch, of Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
and Kentucky. As early as August, 1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a boat propelled by an engine which moved
an endless chain to which little paddles were attached. The next year,
Fitch's second boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side--an
arrangement suggesting the "side-wheeler" of the future--successfully
plied the Delaware off "Conjuror's Point," as the scene of Fitch's
labors was dubbed in whimsical amusement and derision. In 1787 Rumsey,
encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a stream of water
taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern. In 1788 Fitch's third
boat traversed the distance from Philadelphia to Burlington on numerous
occasions and ran as a regular packet in 1790, covering over a thousand
miles. In this model Fitch shifted the paddles from the sides to the
rear, thus anticipating in principle the modern stern-wheeler.

It was doubtless Fitch's experiments in 1785 that led to the first plan
in America to operate a land vehicle by steam. Oliver Evans, a neighbor
and acquaintance of Fitch's, petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature
in 1786 for the right of operating wagons propelled by steam on the
highways of that State. This petition was derisively rejected; but
a similar one made to the Legislature of Maryland was granted on the
ground that such action could hurt nobody. Evans in 1802 took fiery
revenge on the scoffers by actually running his little five-horse-power
carriage through Philadelphia. The rate of speed, however, was so slow
that the idea of moving vehicles by steam was still considered useless
for practical purposes. Eight years later, Evans offered to wager $3000
that, on a level road, he could make a carriage driven by steam equal
the speed of the swiftest horse, but he found no response. In 1812
he asserted that he was willing to wager that he could drive a steam
carriage on level rails at a rate of fifteen miles an hour. Evans thus
anticipat