In the latter part of the year 1800, Mr. Jefferson appointed the Chancellor minister to France, where he remained until 1804, having in the meanwhile negotiated the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United States, and where he made the acquaintance of Robert Fulton. In 1804, the Chancellor made the tour of Europe, and returned the following year to the United States. In Colden’s Life of Fulton, there is an account, in the Chancellor’s own words, of the commencement of his acquaintance with Fulton. I quote: “Robert R. Livingston, Esquire, when minister in France, met with Mr. Fulton, and they formed that friendship and connection with each other to which a similarity of pursuits generally gives birth. He communicated to Mr. Fulton the importance of steamboats to their own country; informed him of what had been attempted in America, and of his resolution to resume the pursuit on his return, and advised him to turn his attention to the subject.” We have already seen that Mr. Fulton’s plan, after making calculations as to the efficiency of paddles and ducks’ feet, was to use endless chains with resisting boards upon them as propellors. With these he made a course of experiments on a little rivulet that runs through the village of Plombiéres, in France, in 1802; and “addressed several letters to Mr. Livingston and Mr. Barlow, giving them a minute account of his experiments and assurances of the certainty of success which they afforded him.” That the Chancellor had informed Fulton of what had been attempted in America, is admitted by Colden; and this, too, prior doubtless, to the experiments at Plombiéres. That Roosevelt’s pertinacity in regard to wheels over the sides was communicated with other information is not to be doubted; that the Chancellor should have told him, as he told Roosevelt, in the letter of October 28th, 1798, “that they were not to be thought of,” it is most reasonable to suppose; and that Fulton agreed with the Chancellor is proved by the “assurance of certain success” which he entertained, of endless chains and floats, or resisting boards. Between the spring of 1802 and the fall of that year, Mr. Fulton changed his mind; for he and Livingston were building a boat, propelled by Roosevelt’s vertical wheels, in January, 1803. The Chancellor, by this time, had become convinced that vertical wheels were things “to be thought of.” That it was Roosevelt’s plan that was adopted after all their own plans had failed—the plan derived, with the details of its execution, from Roosevelt himself,—does not seem to admit of any reasonable doubt.