From the day the “Clermont” breasted the tide of the Hudson there was no check in the conquest of the waters by steam.  Up the narrowest rivers, across the most tempestuous bays, along the placid waters of Long Island Sound, coasting along the front yard of the nation from Portland to Savannah the steamboats made their way, tying the young nation indissolubly together.  Curiously enough it was Livingston’s monopoly that gave the first impetus to the extension of steam navigation.  A mechanic by the name of Robert L. Stevens, one of the first of a family distinguished in New York and New Jersey, built a steamboat on the Hudson.  After one or two trips had proved its usefulness, the possessors of the monopoly became alarmed and began proceedings against the new rival.  Driven from the waters about New York, Stevens took his boat around to Philadelphia.  Thus not only did he open an entirely new field of river and inland water transportation, but the trip to Philadelphia demonstrated the entire practicability of steam for use in coastwise navigation.  Thereafter the vessels multiplied rapidly on all American waters.  Fulton himself set up a shipyard, in which he built steam ferries, river and coastwise steamboats.  In 1809 he associated himself with Nicholas J. Roosevelt, to whom credit is due for the invention of the vertical paddle-wheel, in a partnership for the purpose of putting steamboats on the great rivers of the Mississippi Valley, and in 1811 the “New Orleans” was built and navigated by Roosevelt himself, from Pittsburg to the city at the mouth of the Mississippi.  The voyage took fourteen days, and before undertaking it, he descended the two rivers in a flatboat, to familiarize himself with the channel.  The biographer of Roosevelt prints an interesting letter from Fulton, in which he says, “I have no pretensions to be the inventor of the steamboat.  Hundreds of others have tried it and failed.”  Four years after Roosevelt’s voyage, the “Enterprise” made for the first time in history the voyage up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from New Orleans to Louisville, and from that era the great rivers may be said to have been fairly opened to that commerce, which in time became the greatest agency in the building up of the nation.  The Great Lakes were next to feel the quickening influence of the new motive power, but it was left for the Canadian, John Hamilton, of Queenston, to open this new field.  The progress of steam navigation on both lakes and rivers will be more fully described in the chapters devoted to that topic.

So rapidly now did the use of the steamboat increase on Long Island Sound, on the rivers, and along the coast that the newspapers began to discuss gravely the question whether the supply of fuel would long hold out.  The boats used wood exclusively—­coal was then but little used—­and despite the vast forests which covered the face of the land the price of wood in cities rose because of their demand.  Mr. McMaster, the eminent historian, discovers that