[20] M. Bergenroth says the documents at Simancas consist of--1. A holograph letter of Blasco Garay to the Emperor, dated Malaga, 10th Sept., 1540, containing his report on the trial trip of one of his paddle-wheel ships; 2. The report of the Captain Antonio Destigarura on the same trial trip; 3. The report of the Provcedores of Malaga concerning the same trip, dated 27th July, 1540; 4. The report of Blasco Garay to the Emperor, dated 6th July, 1543, concerning the trial trip of another of his paddle-wheel ships made at Barcelona in June, 1543; 5. A letter of Blasco Garay to Carrs, dated 20th June, 1543. In none of these is there to be found any reference to steam-power; but only to the power of men employed in driving the paddle-wheels. This is confirmed by the independent examination of the same documents by J. Macgregor, Esq., of the Temple, who gives the result in a Letter to Bennet Woodcroft, Esq., inserted as a note to the ‘Abridgments of the Specifications relating to Steam Propulsion,’ pp. 105–7. It appears probable that although others before Papin had speculated as to the possibility of constructing a boat to be driven by the power of steam, he was the first to test the theory by actual experiment; the first to construct a model steamboat. His first experiments were doubtless failures. The engine contrived by himself was found inapplicable to the driving of ships, as it had been to the pumping of mines; and it was not until he saw the model of Savery’s engine exhibited to the Royal Society of London, in 1698, and witnessed the trial of the same inventor s paddle-wheel boat on the Thames in the course of the same year that it occurred to him to combine the two contrivances in one, and apply Savery’s engine to drive Savery’s paddle-wheels. Returning to Marburg, he proceeded with his experiments, and informed Liebnitz that he had employed both suction and pressure by steam; that he had made a model of a carriage propelled by this force, which succeeded; and he hoped that the same power would answer for boats. Papin prosecuted his idea with great zeal, trying many expedients, encountering many difficulties, and meeting with many disappointments. At length, after about fifteen years’ labour, he succeeded in constructing a model engine, fitted in a boat--“une petite machine d’un vaisseau à roues”--which worked to his satisfaction. His next object was to get his model transported to London, to exhibit it on the Thames. “It is important,” he writes to Liebnitz (7th July, 1707), “that my new construction of vessel should be put to the proof in a seaport like London, where there is depth enough to apply the new invention, which, by means of fire, will render one or two men capable of producing more effect than some hundreds of rowers.” Papin had considerable difficulty in obtaining the requisite permission from the authorities to enable his