The year 1811 was one of strange happenings. A comet blazed in the skies, a flood covered the lands in the valley, causing an epidemic of sickness, and earthquakes shook the whole region from the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. Small wonder that the Indians who lived in the forests along the Ohio and Mississippi paddled away in fright from the steamboat as it approached. They thought it was an evil thing. The voyage came to an end, and a happy incident marked its close, for just before the steamboat reached the city of New Orleans, a tiny passenger arrived on board to give it final blessing, for a little child was born to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt. The boat was kept at New Orleans to use as a packet between that city and Natchez, but as pioneer it had proved the possibility for other steamboats to navigate the big river successfully, and they rapidly multiplied. Within twenty years after the voyage of the _New Orleans_ hundreds of steam-propellers were paddling their easy way up and down the river. Steam navigation was a proved fact upon the Mississippi. In this connection it is interesting to read the following extract from a letter Fulton wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson, on April 7th, 1813. It outlines a still more extended system of steam navigation: “I am not idle as to torpedoes but secrecy is necessary. When peace returns, or in four or five years from this date, I shall have a line of steamboats from Quebec to Mexico and to St. Mary’s; the route is up the St. Lawrence, over Lake Champlain, down the Hudson to Brunswick, cross the Delaware to Philadelphia; by land carriage to Pittsburgh, down the Ohio and Mississippi to Red River, up it to above Natchitoches: the total land carriage about five hundred miles, the other route to St. Mary’s land carriage not more than two hundred miles. The most of these boats are now constructing.” CHAPTER XVII FULTON’S HOME AND FULTON’S HONORS We have followed Fulton through widely different works,—art, canal navigation, the invention of the submarine torpedo and the steamboat. In 1814 he had reached almost the end of his busy and useful life. Robert Fulton lived to be only fifty years old,—not the allotted “three score and ten” named by the Psalmist; yet during his half-century he accomplished infinitely more than many another does in a life full of years. To labor incessantly was his habit and pleasure. As he had written to Joel Barlow, “I cannot exist without a project, or projects, and I have two or three of the first order of sublimity.” Herein lay the secret, if such an openly admitted fact can be so termed, of his valuable life. He looked upon work as sublime; he exalted it to dignity; and its product to him was world-wide fame because of his world-wide service to humanity.