ain (now called Fulton)
in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. See map in paragraph 135.]

194. Fulton goes to England and to France; his iron bridges; his
diving-boat, and what he did with it in France.--Soon after buying
the farm for his mother, young Fulton went to England and then to
France. He staid in those countries twenty years. In England Fulton
built some famous iron bridges, but he was more interested in boats
than in anything else.

While he was in France he made what he called a diving-boat. It would
go under water nearly as well as it would on top, so that wherever
a fish could go, Fulton could follow him. His object in building such
a boat was to make war in a new way. When a swordfish[3] attacks a
whale, he slips round under him and stabs the monster with his sword.
Fulton said, 'If an enemy's war-ship should come into the harbor to
do mischief, I can get into my diving-boat, slip under the ship,
fasten a torpedo[4] to it, and blow the ship "sky high."'

[Illustration: FULTON'S DIVING-BOAT. (Going under water to fasten
a torpedo on the bottom of a vessel.)]

Napoleon Bonaparte liked nothing so much as war, and he let Fulton
have an old vessel to see if he could blow it up. He tried it, and
everything happened as he expected: nothing was left of the vessel
but the pieces.

[Footnote 3: Swordfish: the name given to a large fish which has a
sword-like weapon, several feet in length, projecting from its upper
jaw.]

[Footnote 4: Torpedo: here a can filled with powder, and so
constructed that it could be fastened to the bottom of a vessel.]

195. What Fulton did in England with his diving-boat; what he said
about America.--Then Fulton went back to England and tried the same
thing there. He went out in his diving-boat and fastened a torpedo
under a vessel, and when the torpedo exploded, the vessel, as he said,
went up like a "bag of feathers," flying in all directions.

[Illustration: WHAT THE TORPEDO DID.]

The English people paid Fulton seventy-five thousand dollars for
showing them what he could do in this way. Then they offered to give
him a great deal more--in fact, to make him a very rich man--if he
would promise never to let any other country know just how he blew
vessels up. But Fulton said, 'I am an American; and if America should
ever want to use my diving-boat in war, she shall have it first of
all.'

196. Fulton makes his first steamboat.--But while Fulton was doing
these things wit