Although this particular crisis must be considered as bearing more directly on present-day matters of interest in view of the fact that the importance of steam-traction by rail relative to warlike operations commenced at that time to make itself felt, the extent to which the nation seemed likely to be imperilled was, nevertheless, scarcely to be compared with the danger that threatened during what may be termed the closing phase of the Napoleonic era, when in the year 1805 massed in camp at Boulogne was the flower of the French Army equipped with quantities of flat-bottomed boats ready for its conveyance across the Channel. To counter this formidable menace was mustered in England a force of 300,000 Volunteers, imbued with the same fervent ardour, the same spirit of intense patriotism and self-sacrifice that has ever been evinced by the country in her hour of peril. How the menace was in fact averted, and the last bid for world-domination by the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte frustrated, is common knowledge, the memorable action off Cap Trafalgar determining once and for all the inviolability of England's shores. "England," exclaimed Pitt, "has saved herself by her courage; she will save Europe by her example." The average historian of to-day, who mentally is as firmly convinced that the genius of Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar as he is ocularly certain that the famous admiral's statue dominates Trafalgar Square, will, on the other hand, in all probability deny that the use of steam as a motive force was contemporaneous with the period in which Nelson lived. But although it is somewhat of a far cry from the latter part of the eighteenth century to the "eighteen-fifties" when steam was to become a factor of no mean importance in the waging of modern war, there is, nevertheless, conclusive evidence to show that dating so far back as the "seventeen-seventies" individual efforts of admittedly a most elementary, albeit utterly fascinating, kind were already being made with a view to solving the problem wrapt up in this "water-vapour," and so compelling the elusive energy to be derived therefrom as a motive agency for rendering facile human itinerancy. No sooner had the first self-propelled steam-carriage made its appearance on the road, than speculation became rife as to the range of potentialities lying latent in the then phenomenal invention; well-nigh limitless seemed the vista about to unfold itself to human ambition, and looking back over the past century and a half how strangely prophetic sound these lines from the pen of Erasmus Darwin, who died in 1802!-- "Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or, on wide-waving wings expanded, bear The flying chariot through the field of air!"