Joseph Rodman Drake.

* * *

An original letter from Robert Fulton to the minister of Bavaria at the court of France, written in 1809, upon the question of putting steamboats on the Danube, is of interest at the present day:  “The distance from New York to Albany is 160 miles; the tide rises as far as Albany; its velocity is on an average 11/2 miles an hour.

“We thus have the tide half the time in favor of the boat and half the time against her.  The boat is 100 feet long, 16 feet wide and 7 feet deep; the steam engine is of the power of 20 horses; she runs 41/2 miles an hour in still water.  Consequently when the tide is 11/2 miles an hour in her favor she runs 53/4 miles an hour.  When the tide is against her she runs 23/4 miles an hour.  Thus in theory her average velocity is 41/4 miles an hour, but in practice we take advantage of the currents.  When they are against us we keep near shore in the eddies, where the current is weak or the eddy in our favor; when the tide is in our favor we take the centre of the stream and draw every advantage from it.  In this way our average speed is 5 miles an hour, and we run to Albany, 160 miles, in about 32 hours.”  Previous to the invention of the steamboat there were two modes of conveyance.  One was by the common sloops; they charged 42 francs, and were on the average four days in making the passage—­they have sometimes been as long as eight days.  The dread of such tedious voyages prevented great numbers of persons from going in sloops.  The second mode of conveyance was the mail, or stage.  They charged $8, or 44 francs, and the expenses on the road were about $5, or 30 francs, so that expenses amounted to $13.  The time required was 48 hours.  The steamboat has rendered the communication between New York and Albany so cheap and certain that the number of passengers are rapidly increasing.  Persons who live 150 miles beyond Albany know the hour she will leave that city, and making their calculations to arrive at York, stay two days to transact business, return with the boat, and are with their families in one week.  The facility has rendered the boat a great favorite with the public.

* * *

  Through many a blooming wild and woodland green
  The Hudson’s sleeping waters winding stray.

  Margaretta V. Faugeres.

* * *

A telegram from Exeter, N. H., in 1886, recorded the death of Dr. William Perry, the oldest person in Exeter and the oldest graduate of Harvard College, at the age of ninety-eight years.  He was the sole survivor of the passengers on Fulton’s first steamboat on its first trip down the Hudson, and the connecting link of three generations of progress.  He was born in 1788, was a member of 1811 in Harvard, and grandfather of Sarah Orne Jewett, the authoress.