(228.)

The credit of having afforded the first practical solution of the problem to apply the steam engine to the propulsion of ships, undoubtedly belongs to the people of the United States of America. The geographical character of their vast country, not less than the sanguine and enterprising spirit of the nation, contributed to this. A coast of four thousand miles in extent, stretching from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the embouchures of the Mississippi, indented and [Pg488] serrated in every part with natural harbours and sheltered bays, and fringed with islands forming sounds—capes, and promontories enclosing arms of the sea, in which the waters are free from the roll of the ocean, and take the placid character of lakes,—rivers of imposing magnitude, navigable for vessels of the largest class, for many hundreds and in some instances for many thousands of miles, affording access to the innermost population of an empire, whose area vastly exceeds the whole European continent,—chains of lakes composed of the most extensive bodies of fresh water in the known world,—and this extensive continent peopled by races carrying with them the habits and feelings together with much of the skill and knowledge of the most civilized parts of the globe, endowed also with that inextinguishable spirit of enterprise which ever belongs to an emigrant people,—form a combination of circumstances more than sufficient to account for the fact of this nation snatching from England, the parent of the steam engine, the honour of first bringing into practical operation one of the most important—if indeed it be not altogether the most important—of the many applications of that machine to the uses of life.

The circumstances which rendered these extensive tracts of inland and coast navigation eminently suited to the application of steam power, formed so many obstructions and difficulties to the application of other more ordinary means of locomotion on water. The sheltered bays and sounds which offered a smooth and undisturbed surface to the action of the infant steamer argued the absence of that element which gave effect to the sails and rigging of the wind-propelled ship, and the rapid currents of the gigantic streams formed by the drainage of this great continent, though facilitating access to the coast, rendered the oar powerless in the ascent.