and talent of their distinguished father. The first steamboat that ever
crossed the ocean was built by one of our countrymen, and their skill in
naval architecture has been put in requisition by the Emperor of Russia
and the Sultan of Turkey. The steam machines invented by our countrymen
to drive piles, load vessels, and excavate roads, are most ingenious and
useful. The use of steam, as a locomotive power, upon the water and the
land, is admirably adapted to our mighty rivers and extended territory.
From Washington to the mouth of the Oregon is but one half,[3] and to
the mouth of the Del Norte but one fourth, of the distance of the
railroads already constructed here; and to the latter point, at the rate
of motion (thirty miles an hour) now in daily use abroad, the trip would
be performed in two days, and to the former in four days. Thus, steam,
if we measure distance by the time in which it is traversed, renders our
whole Union, with its most extended limits, smaller than was the State
of New York ten years since. Steam cars have been moved, as an
experiment, both here and abroad, many hundred miles, at the rate of
sixty miles an hour; but what will be the highest velocity ultimately
attained in common use, either upon the water or the land, is a most
important problem, as yet entirely unsolved. Our respected citizens,
Morey and Drake, have endeavored to substitute the force of explosion of
gaseous compounds for steam. The first was the pioneer, and the second
has shown that the problem is still worth pursuing to solution. An
energetic Western mechanic made a bold but unsuccessful effort to put in
operation an engine acting by the expansion of air by heat; and a
similar most ingenious attempt was made by Mr. Walter Byrnes, of
Concordia, Louisiana; as also to substitute compressed air, and air
compressed and expanded, as a locomotive power. All attempts to use air
as a motive power, except the balloon, the sail vessel, the air gun, and
the windmill, have thus far failed; but what inventive genius may yet
accomplish in this respect, remains yet undetermined. There is, it is
true, a mile or more of pneumatic railway used between Dublin and
Kingstown. An air pump, driven by steam, exhausts the air from a
cylinder in which a piston moves; this cylinder is laid the whole length
of the road, and the piston is connected to a car above, so that, as the
piston moves forward on the exhaustion of the air in front of it, the
car is