believed that she would succeed in achieving what she did. The crews of passing vessels, as she went gaily up this gloriously fascinating river between its hilly banks, could not understand the monster belching forth sparks from its pine-wood fuel, advancing steadily without sails in spite of wind or tide. Some abandoned their ships and fled to the woods in terror, others knelt down and said their prayers that they might be delivered from so unholy a creature. As we look down on her decks we can see her under the charge of a paid skipper, with Fulton, handsome, but anxious both as to his success and the lives of his guests, on board. Some prophesied that she would blow up, and none thought she would ever reach her destination. Those who are familiar with the characteristics of the crews of the modern steamship will learn with a smile that, of course, her chief engineer was a Scotsman, the first of that long line of serious-faced men whom Kipling and others have commemorated in “McAndrew’s Hymn” and the like. Leaving New York on Monday at one o’clock, the ship arrived at Clermont, Livingston’s seat, exactly twenty-four hours later, having travelled 110 miles, which is about the distance that an ordinary sailing coaster nowadays covers in the same time on the sea. Among those on board was an Englishman, the then Dean of Ripon, though the sentimental may find perhaps a fitting sequel to the first stage of the voyage, when, before the ship had yet anchored off Clermont, an announcement was made that Fulton had become betrothed to another passenger, Miss Harriet Livingston, niece of that other Livingston with whom Fulton had been so closely associated in his first steamboat efforts. It was, in fact, this same statesman who, in making the announcement, also prophesied that before the close of the nineteenth century vessels having no other motive power than steam might be able even to make the voyage to Europe. The ensuing chapters of this book will show how speedily and with what quickly succeeding changes this possibility was to be realised.