Several weeks were spent in traveling from town to town, and on September 1st, 1807, they found themselves in New York City, still undecided where they would go.
One morning Fernando went for his usual walk toward the river, when a large crowd of people at the wharf attracted his attention. Drawing near, he saw a curious-looking boat on the water, the like of which he had never seen before. It was one hundred feet long, twelve feet wide and seven feet deep. There was a staff or mast at the bow, another at the stern. From a tall chimney there issued volumes of smoke, while from a smaller pipe there came the hissing of boiling water and white steam. Two great, naked paddle-wheels were on the boat, one on each side near the middle. Fernando thought this must be the toy of which he had heard so much, being constructed by Robert Fulton and Chancellor Livingston. On one side of the boat was painted the name Clermont.
"What is that?" Fernando asked of a rollicking, fun-loving young Irishman about twenty-two or three years of age, who stood near.
"Faith, sir, it's a steamboat. We have all come to see her launched. They call her the Clermont; but it's mesilf as thinks she ought to be Fulton's Folly, for divil a bit do I believe she'll go a cable's length."
Fernando and his new acquaintance drew nearer. The hissing of the steam and the roaring of the furnaces were fearful.
"Do you know Robert Fulton?" Fernando asked.
"Indade, I do. Would you like to see the greatest lunatic out of Bedlam? Then it's mesilf as will point him out to yez."
"I should like to see him."
There were a number of men at work on the boat, all expressing the wildest eagerness and anxiety. They were rushing forward and aft, above and below, to those ponderous engines and boilers; but no one could see what they did. At last Mr. Fulton, the great inventor, appeared. He was a large, smooth-shaved gentleman, with a long head and melancholy gray eye. On his nose was a smut spot from the machinery. Thousands were now assembled to witness the trial voyage. Mr. Livingston gave the order to cast off, and start the vessel. The lines were loosed and the steam turned on. Loud hissed the confined monster; but the wheels did not move. What was the matter?
"Failure!" was on every tongue, and the crowd assembled already began to hoot and jeer. Mr. Fulton's face expressed the deepest anxiety. He ran below to inspect the machinery. A bolt had caught. This was removed, and then the ponderous wheels began to move. The great paddles churned the water to a mass of foam, and the boat glided forward against wind and tide at a rate of speed astonishing. Fernando saw Robert Livingston standing in the stern waving his handkerchief at the crowd which was now sending up cheer after cheer. The American flag was run up on the staff, and the steamboat continued on her course up the river to Albany, making the distance of one hundred and sixty miles in thirty-six hours against wind and tide; and from that time until now, navigation by steam, travel and commerce, has been steadily increasing in volume and perfection, until such vessels may be seen on every ocean and in almost every harbor of the globe, even among the ice packs of the polar seas. This was the second of the great and beneficent achievements which distinguished American inventors at that early period of our country's struggles. The cotton-gin, invented by Eli Whitney, was the first; an implement that could do the work of a thousand persons in cleaning cotton wool of the seeds. That machine has been one of the most important aids in the accumulation of our national wealth.