Congress promised that part of the money derived from the sale of
land in Ohio should be used to build a road from some place on the Ohio
River to tide water. By 1806 the money so set apart amounted to $12,000,
and with this was begun the construction of a broad pike from Cumberland
(on the Potomac) in Maryland to Wheeling (on the Ohio) in West
Virginia.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's _History_, Vol. III., pp. 469-470.]

[Illustration: Phoenix[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an oil painting.]

%285. Steamboats.%--This increasing demand for cheap transportation
now made it possible for Fulton to carry into successful operation an
idea he had long had in mind. For twenty years past inventors had been
exhibiting steamboats. James Rumsey had exhibited one on the Potomac.
John Fitch had shown one on the Delaware in 1787. (See p. 190.) In 1804
Robert Fulton exhibited a steamboat on the Seine at Paris in France;
Oliver Evans had a steam scow on the Delaware River at Philadelphia; and
John Stevens crossed the Hudson from Hoboken to New York in a steamboat
of his own construction. In 1806 Stevens built another, the
_Phoenix_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Preble's _History of Steam Navigation _, pp. 35-66;
Thurston's _Robert Fulton_ in Makers of America Series.]

These men were ahead of their time, and it was not till the August day,
1807, when Robert Fulton made his experiment on the Hudson, that the era
of the steamboat opened. His vessel, called the _Clermont_, made the
trip up the river from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours.

[Illustration: Model of the Clermont[2]]

[Footnote 2: Made from the original drawings, and now in the National
Museum.]

Then the usefulness of the invention was at last appreciated, and in
1808 a line of steam vessels went up and down the Hudson. In 1809
Stevens sent his _Phoenix_ by sea to Philadelphia and ran it on the
Delaware. Another steamboat was on the Raritan River, and a third on
Lake Champlain. In 1811 a boat steamed from Pittsburg to New Orleans,
and in 1812 steam ferryboats plied between what is now Jersey City and
New York, and between Philadelphia and Camden.[3]

[Footnote 3: On the early steamboats see McMaster's _History of the
People of the United States_, Vol. III., pp. 486-494.]

%286. The Currency; the Mint.%--Quite as marvelous was the change
which in five and twenty years had taken place in money matters. When
the Constitution became law in 1789, there were no United States coins
and