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It was a great moment in the annals of discovery, and from that time to this the genius of improvement has moved onward with unprecedented strides; and this in the application of steam-power as well as the results, stupendous as these last have been.
In writing, some months after he received it, to a friend on the application of steam-power to grist-mills, then lately introduced in England, he adds: "I hear you are applying the same agent in America to navigate boats, and I have little doubt but that it will be applied generally to machines, so as to supersede the use of water-ponds, and of course to lay open all the streams for navigation."
Up till comparatively recent times the particular difficulties I have been enumerating did not exist, since, under the system of home industries universal before the introduction of steam-power, there was not the same economic competition between men and women, nor was there this unnatural gap between the occupation of the woman during her girlhood and afterwards in her married life.
Instead of the old Chinese cast-iron pans which were in use, far superior articles have been imported from Europe; and many large factories worked by steam-power and with all modern improvements have been established. In agriculture, likewise, creditable progress is noticeable. Improved ploughs, carts, and farming implements generally, are to be had in plenty.
Coupled with my observation that there were no life preservers in my little cabin, nor anywhere else, the situation appeared disquieting, but the captain, a small-sized Malay and a good sailor, as all of that race are, reassured me by saying that it was only the glass for controlling the steam-power that was broken. After a while the escape of steam was checked and a new glass was put in.
These difficulties have been greatly reduced by the application of steam-power to navigation, and the time has come when an American can make the tour of Europe with but little more expenditure of time and money than it costs even a native of Europe to do it. One of my principal objects in writing this book is to encourage others to make similar tours.
But the farmer ranges from side to side of his wide fields, covering hundreds, or even thousands, of acres with his operations. He is better situated than the miner in respect of the economical and healthy application of horse-power, but far worse in regard to the immediate possibilities of steam-power and electrically-conducted energy.
With our enormous steam-power we held our own for a while although unable to make much headway; but at last a tremendous sea took us right abeam on the port side; the main hatch had been left open, a small Niagara poured down it, and doused our fires. No canvas would have stood the hurricane that was blowing, and for some time we were in a serious way.
A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a counter-blast, hinting at steam-power, powerful in two distances. What did I know then of Hoghton Towers?
We saw a model of a locomotive engine traveling on a circular railroad with immense velocity, and rapidly ascending an inclined plane of far greater elevation than any hitherto ascended by steam-power.
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