killed himself.

I am glad to be able to tell you a different story of the next man who
tried to make a steamboat. His name was Robert Fulton. He was born in
Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the water, he and the other
boys having an old flatboat which they pushed along with a pole. Fulton
got tired of this way of getting along, and like a natural-born inventor
set his wits to work. In the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung
over the sides and could be moved in the water by turning a crank and
so force the boat onward. The boys found this much easier than the pole,
and likely enough young Fulton thought a large vessel might be moved in
the same way.

He knew all about what others had done. He had heard how Rumsey moved
his boat by pumping water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling it
along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland moved by a stern paddle-wheel.
I fancy he had not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a boy to
go fishing with, for when he set out to invent his steamboat this is the
plan he tried.

Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had bad luck there. Then he
came to America and built a boat in New York. While he was at work on
this boat in America, James Watt, of whom I have already told you, was
building him an engine in England. He wanted the best engine that he
could get, and he thought the Scotch inventor was the right man to make
it.

While Fulton was working some of the smart New Yorkers were laughing.
They called his boat "Fulton's Folly," and said it would not move faster
than the tide would carry it. But he let them laugh and worked on, and
at last, one day in 1807, the new boat, which he named the "Clermont,"
was afloat in the Hudson ready for trial. Hundreds of curious people
came to see it start. Some were ready to laugh again when they saw the
boat, with its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down in the water on both
sides. They were not covered with wooden frames as were such wheels
afterwards.

"That boat move? So will a log move if set adrift," said the people who
thought themselves very wise. "It will move when the tide moves it, and
not before." But none of them felt like laughing when they saw the
wheels begin to turn and the boat to glide out into the stream, moving
against the tide.

"She moves! she moves!" cried the crowd, and nobody said a word about
"Fulton's Folly."

Move she did. Up the Hudson she went against wind and current, and
reached Alb