rk, Stevens took his boat around to Philadelphia. Thus
not only did he open an entirely new field of river and inland water
transportation, but the trip to Philadelphia demonstrated the entire
practicability of steam for use in coastwise navigation. Thereafter the
vessels multiplied rapidly on all American waters. Fulton himself set up a
shipyard, in which he built steam ferries, river and coastwise steamboats.
In 1809 he associated himself with Nicholas J. Roosevelt, to whom credit
is due for the invention of the vertical paddle-wheel, in a partnership
for the purpose of putting steamboats on the great rivers of the
Mississippi Valley, and in 1811 the "New Orleans" was built and navigated
by Roosevelt himself, from Pittsburg to the city at the mouth of the
Mississippi. The voyage took fourteen days, and before undertaking it, he
descended the two rivers in a flatboat, to familiarize himself with the
channel. The biographer of Roosevelt prints an interesting letter from
Fulton, in which he says, "I have no pretensions to be the inventor of the
steamboat. Hundreds of others have tried it and failed." Four years after
Roosevelt's voyage, the "Enterprise" made for the first time in history
the voyage up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from New Orleans to
Louisville, and from that era the great rivers may be said to have been
fairly opened to that commerce, which in time became the greatest agency
in the building up of the nation. The Great Lakes were next to feel the
quickening influence of the new motive power, but it was left for the
Canadian, John Hamilton, of Queenston, to open this new field. The
progress of steam navigation on both lakes and rivers will be more fully
described in the chapters devoted to that topic.

So rapidly now did the use of the steamboat increase on Long Island Sound,
on the rivers, and along the coast that the newspapers began to discuss
gravely the question whether the supply of fuel would long hold out. The
boats used wood exclusively--coal was then but little used--and despite
the vast forests which covered the face of the land the price of wood in
cities rose because of their demand. Mr. McMaster, the eminent historian,
discovers that in 1825 thirteen steamers plying on the Hudson burned
sixteen hundred cords of wood per week. Fourteen hundred cords more were
used by New York ferry boats, and each trip of a Sound steamer consumed
sixty cords. The American who traverses the placid waters of Lo