In the days when De Witt Clinton was Mayor the first steam-boat was built to be used on the Hudson River.  For many a year there had been men who felt sure that steam could be applied to boats and made to propel them against the wind and the tide.  They had tried very hard to build such a boat but none had succeeded.  Sometimes the boilers burst.  Sometimes the paddle-wheels refused to revolve.  For one reason or another the boats were failures.

A man named John Fitch had built a little steam-boat and had tried it on the Collect Pond, where it had steamed around much to the surprise of the good people of the city who went to look at it.  But it was considered more as a toy than anything else.  Nothing came of the experiment, and the boat itself was neglected after a time and dragged up on the bank beside the lake, where it lay until it rotted away.

Then Robert Livingston, who was chancellor of the city, felt sure he could build a steam-boat that would be of use.  As he was a wealthy man he spent a great deal of money trying to make such a boat; and as he was a very learned man he gave much thought to it.

Chancellor Livingston was in France when he met another American, named Robert Fulton, who was an artist and a civil engineer, and who also hoped to build a boat that could be moved by steam.  Livingston and Fulton decided that they would together build such a boat.

[Illustration:  The Clermont, Fulton’s First Steam-Boat.]

So Fulton came back to New York and with the money given him by Livingston began to build a steam-boat which he called the Clermont—­the name of Chancellor Livingston’s country home.  The citizens laughed a good deal at the idea and called the boat “Fulton’s Folly.”  In August, 1807, the Clermont was finished, and a crowd gathered to see it launched and to laugh at its failure.  But the boat moved out into the stream and up the Hudson River, while the people gazed in wonder at the marvellous thing gliding through the water, moved apparently by some more than human force.  It went all the way to Albany, and from that day on continued to make trips up and down the river.  This was the first successful steam-boat in the world.  Soon steam ferry-boats took the place of those which had been driven by horse-power.  Quickly, too, after the success of the Clermont, steam navigation went rapidly forward on both sides of the ocean.  Fulton made other and much better boats.  Other men followed in his footsteps, and the great ocean liners of to-day are one of the results.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE CITY PLAN