Symington took out letters patent in the same year, securing the invention, or rather the novel combination of inventions, embodied in his steam-boat, but he never succeeded in getting it introduced into practical use. From the date of completing his invention, fortune seemed to run steadily against him. The Duke of Bridgewater, who had ordered a number of Symington's steam-boats for his canal, died, and his executors countermanded the order. Symington failed in inducing any other canal company to make trial of his invention. Lord Dundas also took the _Charlotte Dundas_ off the Forth and Clyde Canal, where she had been at work, and from that time the vessel was never more tried. Symington had no capital of his own to work upon, and he seems to have been unable to make friends among capitalists. The rest of his life was for the most part thrown away. Toward the close of it his principal haunt was London, amid whose vast population he was one of the many waifs and strays. He succeeded in obtaining a grant of £100 from the Privy Purse in 1824, and afterward an annuity of £50, but he did not live long to enjoy it, for he died in March, 1831, and was buried in the church-yard of St. Botolph, Aldgate, where there is not even a stone to mark the grave of the inventor of the first practicable steam-boat. [Illustration: OLIVER EVANS'S MODEL LOCOMOTIVE.] While the inventive minds of England were thus occupied, those of America were not idle. The idea of applying steam-power to the propulsion of carriages on land is said to have occurred to John Fitch in 1785; but he did not pursue the idea "for more than a week," being diverted from it by his scheme of applying the same power to the propulsion of vessels on the water.[14] About the same time, Oliver Evans, a native of Newport, Delaware, was occupied with a project for driving steam-carriages on common roads; and in 1786 the Legislature of Maryland granted him the exclusive right for that state. Several years, however, passed before he could raise the means for erecting a model carriage, most of his friends regarding the project as altogether chimerical and impracticable. In 1800 or 1801, Evans began a steam-carriage at his own expense; but he had not proceeded far with it when he altered his intention, and applied the engine intended for the driving of a carriage to the driving of a small grinding-mill, in which it was found efficient. In 1804 he constructed at Philadelphia a second engine of five-horse power, working on the high-pressure principle, which was placed on a large flat or scow, mounted upon wheels. "This," says his biographer, "was considered a fine opportunity to show the public that his engine could propel both land and water conveyances. When the machine was finished, Evans fixed under it, in a rough and temporary manner, wheels with wooden axle-trees. Although the whole weight was equal to two hundred barrels of flour, yet his