[14] This was the “Fulton,” the first steamship in the American navy. Robert Fulton directed her construction, and she made her trial trip June 1, 1815, a few months after his death. Her naval service was unimportant. While employed as a receiving-ship at the Brooklyn docks she blew up, June, 1829.—Ed.
[15] The “Chancellor Livingstone,” built under Fulton’s direction, and named in honor of his friend and patron, was completed in 1816. She was one hundred and twenty-five tons larger than any boat then on the Hudson. Her average speed was eight and a half miles an hour. In 1832 she was put on the route between Boston and Portland, being broken up at Portland two years later.—Ed.
[16] Benjamin Charles Incledon (1764-1826), a famous English vocalist.—Ed.
LETTER III
Journey from New York to Philadelphia—Remarks on the country passed through—Notices of companions—Their conversation by the way—Observations on Philadelphia—Institutions—Manufactures—People.
Philadelphia, December 19, 1818.
This letter will give you the details of my journey from New York to Philadelphia, and some particulars with regard to the latter city.[17]
{24} August 5. Got aboard of the Olive-Branch steam-boat for New Brunswick. This is a large vessel, wrought by an engine of forty-five horses’ power. She may at once be pronounced elegant and commodious. The passengers dine on board.
In a company so large, the traveller has it in his power to select the person with whom he would enter into conversation. The individual I fell in with, on this occasion, was a mercantile gentleman from England. He seemed to me a man of a good disposition, and one who possessed considerable knowledge of the principal towns, and of the different ways of transacting business in the United States. The American character, according to his report, is by no means a good one. He expressed himself as completely tired of the country, and proposed returning to England. He told me that he had met with considerable losses by villanous insolvencies. His account, instead of convincing me that the Americans were sinners above all others, just shewed me that he was a good-natured, credulous man, and that he had fallen into the hands of several artful rogues; a class, it would seem, not wanting in America.
The land on both sides of the strait, between Staten Island and the main land, is light and sandy, in some spots almost sterile. People in boats are busy with long wooden tongs, resembling forceps, taking up clams from the bottom, in six or seven feet of water.