“In or about the year 1781 or 1782, this deponent resided with a certain Joseph Oosterhaudt, about four miles above Esopus on the North, or Hudson river, in the State of New York. That he did at that time make very many actual experiments, as well upon mill machinery as upon the motion and buoyancy of bodies in and through water; and did then and there make, rig and put in operation, on a small brook near the house of the aforesaid Oosterhaudt, a small wooden boat or model of a boat with vertical wheels over the sides, each wheel having four arms or paddles, or floats, made of pieces of shingle attached to the periphery of the wheels whereby to take a purchase on the water; and that these wheels being acted upon by hickory and whalebone springs propelled the model of the boat through the water by the agency of a tight cord passed between the wheels and being re-acted on by the springs.” Soon after the evacuation of the city by the British, Mr. Roosevelt returned to New York; and following the bent of his inclinations, we find him, some years afterward, becoming interested in the Schuyler Copper mines in New Jersey, on the Passaic, then called Second river. Here he found some parts of an old atmospheric engine, which he used in completing a perfect machine of that description; and meeting with an engineer from the establishment of Bolton & Watt, whom he employed to make improvements, he built engines for various parties, and constructed for the water works in Philadelphia, the ponderous machines, which, for many years, supplied that city with water, by pumping from the Schuylkill into the distributing reservoir at Centre Square. During all this time, the subject of steam navigation seems never to have been lost sight of. He wanted to substitute for the hickory and whalebone of his Esopus experiment the mighty agent with whose multitudinous uses the world was then beginning to be familiar. Among other persons who had heard of Mr. Roosevelt’s views in this direction, was the late Robert R. Livingston, better known as Chancellor Livingston, who, on the 8th of December, 1797, wrote to him (I quote from the original letter now before me) as follows: “Mr. Stevens mentioned to me your desire to apply the steam machine to a boat. Every attempt of this kind having failed, I have constructed a boat on perfectly new principles which, both in the model and on a large scale has exceeded my expectations. I was about writing to England for a steam machine, but hearing of your wish, I was willing to treat with you on terms which I believe you will find advantageous for the use of my invention.”