ities in those days were as poor as the methods for
transportation; and we can get an idea of the postal arrangements from
an extract from a New York paper published in 1704, which states, "In
the pleasant month of May, the last storm put our Pennsylvania post a
week behind, and has not yet com'd in." But although this was rather
slow communication, New Jersey was better off than many of the civilized
communities of the day; for she had a regular postal system, which had
been invented by Colonel John Hamilton.

Colonel Hamilton's system was considered so good, that the British
Government gave him a patent for it, and adopted it for the mother
country, it being considered much better than the system then in use.
The mails were generally carried in canvas bags by men on horseback; and
this method of transportation was known as the "express" as a horse and
his rider could go much more rapidly than even the best "flying
machines." Mail service in New Jersey greatly improved before the end of
the century.

But it was very hard to persuade the public to encourage Fitch's new
enterprise, even although it promised cheaper and more rapid
transportation than any methods in use; and of course it was still
harder, from the fact that the new steamboats had not yet gone faster
than a sailing vessel with a good breeze. And so, notwithstanding the
value of a system of navigation by which vessels could be made to move
whether there was a breeze or not, and in any direction no matter how
the wind was blowing, there was very little support to the new
steamboat, and the enterprise was so unprofitable that it was given up.

Nearly ten years after Fitch's largest steamboat had been sold as a
piece of useless property, Robert Fulton made a steamboat which ran on
the Hudson River at the rate of five miles an hour; and after this the
practicability of steam navigation began to be slowly acknowledged. But
the waters of New Jersey were the first which were ever ruffled by the
paddles of a steamboat.

New Jersey has another claim to distinction in connection with steam
navigation, for at the Speedwell Iron Works were manufactured some of
the larger portions of the machinery of the "Savannah," the first
steamship which ever crossed the ocean.

NEW JERSEY AND THE LAND OF GOLD.

There was another famous American sailor who came out of New Jersey, who
was perhaps of as much value to his country as any other naval
commander, although he