ork was enlarged, the Court House
at Elizabeth rebuilt, the Harvard University library increased, and many
pretentious buildings put up at the Federal City. [Footnote: McMaster's
United States, 588.] This was but a single form of the sporting mania.
The public stocks, as well as the paper of the numerous canals,
turnpikes, and manufacturing corporations now springing up, were gambled
in a way which would almost shock Wall Street today.

[Illustration: About twenty men on the deck of a sixty foot ship with a
smokestack.]
Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.

Anthracite coal had been discovered and was just beginning to be mined,
but on account of the plentifulness of wood was not for a long time
largely used. The first idea of steam navigation was embodied in an
English patent taken out by Jonathan Hulls in 1736. The initial
experiment of the kind in this country was by William Henry, on the
Conestoga River, Pennsylvania, in 1763. John Fitch navigated the
Delaware steam-wise in 1783-84. In 1790 one of Fitch's steam
paddle-boats made regular trips between Philadelphia and Trenton for
four months. In 1785-86 Oliver Evans experimented in this direction, as
did Rumsey, in Virginia, in 1787. One Morey ran a stern-wheeler of his
own make from Hartford to New York in 1794. Chancellor Livingston built
a steamer on the Hudson in 1797. It was only in 1807 that Fulton
finished his "Clermont" and made a passage up the Hudson to Albany from
New York. It took thirty-three hours, and was the earliest thoroughly
successful steam navigation on record. He subsequently built the
"Orleans" at Pittsburgh. It was completed and made the voyage to New
Orleans in 1811. No steamboat ruffled the waters of Lake Ontario till
1816. The pioneer steam craft on Lake Erie was launched at Black Rock,
May 28, 1818. It is recorded as wonderful that in less than two hours it
had gotten fifteen miles from shore.

[Illustration: Four men on the deck of a forty foot ship with a short
smokestack.]
John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.

[Illustration: Large paper bill.]
Massachusetts Bill of Three Shillings in 1741.

At the North the muster or general training was, for secular
entertainment, the day of days, when the local regiment came out to
reveal and to perfect its skill in the manual and in the evolutions of
the line. Side-shows and a general good time constituted for the crowds
its chief interest. Cider, cakes, pop-corn, and can