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Show 64 Early Western Travels [ Vol. » 6 half a continent; for at that epoch of wonders, and amid them all, the first steamboat was seen descending the great rivers, and the awe- struck Indian [ 34] on the banks beheld the Pinelore flying through the troubled waters. 11 The rise and progress of the steam- engine is without a parallel in the history of modern improvement. Fifty years ago, and the prophetic declaration of Darwin was pardoned only as the enthusiasm of poetry; it is now little more than the detail of reality: " Soon shall thy arm, unconquerM steam, afar Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car; Or on wide- waving wings expanded bear ; The flying chariot through the fields of air; Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above, Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move, Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowd, And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud." " The steam- engine, second only to the press in power, has in a few years anticipated results throughout the New World which centuries, in the ordinary course " of cause and event, , would have failed to produce. The dullest forester, even the cold, phlegmatic native of the wilderness, gazes upon its display of beautiful mechanism, its majestic march upon its element, and its sublimity of power, with astonishment and admiration. Return we to the incidents of our passage. During the morning of our third day upon the Ohio we [ 35] passed, among others, the villages of Rome, Troy, and Rockport." 18 The first steamer upon the waters of the Red River was of a peculiar construction: her steam scape- pipe, instead of ascending perpendicularly from the hurricane deck, projected from the bow, and terminated in the form of a serpent's head. As this monster ascended the wilds of the stream, with her furnaces blazing, pouring forth steam with a roar, the wondering Choctaws upon the banks gave her the poetic and appropriate name of Pinelore, " the Fire- Canoe."- FLAOG. " This quotation is from Botanic Gardens, book i, chapter i, by Erasmus Darwin ( i 731- 1802).- ED. 10 For Rome, see Maximilian's Travels, in our volume xxii, p. 160, note 77.- ED. |