[Copy of the celebrated portrait in London by Sir A. More, after the miniature which the Queen of Spain caused to be painted for herself, believed to be the only authentic portrait of Columbus at that period of his life.]

TH

GLIMPSES OF THE RAILROAD IN HISTORY

HE statement that the world's whole stock of money of every kindgold, silver, and paper-would purchase only about one-third of its railroads is most suggestive. "Almost every distinctive feature of modern business," writes Professor Hadley, "whether good or bad, finds in railroad history at once its chief cause and its fullest development."

Statistics have become with much handling apparently petrified, and in their association with rails and railroads have reached such extraordinary proportions that they fail to convey ideas which can be readily grasped and comprehended by the ordinary mind. When we read that there are three hundred thousand miles of rails in the United States alone, enough in length to make twelve steel girdles around the earth, it creates no deeper impression than the mere fact reiterated that "the world is round and like a ball, seems swinging in the air." Yet there has never been anything more wonderful in history than the invention and establishment of the railroad; and the problems which have confronted the wise men of the present century in securing the results by which millions of travellers are constantly passing with celerity and safety from one part of a country to the other have been invested with romantic interest from the beginning. The true story has all the effective qualities of fable with vastly more color and picturesque fascination.

All efforts to harness steam into a propelling power, to bring it under the control of the human intellect for practical purposes, were derided for many centuries by the incredulous public, and the heroic men who were foremost in schemes of invention and contrivances to this end were regarded with commiseration as victims of a harmless form of lunacy. In our peculiar age they would have been called "cranks." They had no precedents from which to borrow useful information, and no guides in their experiments. The intellect and ingenuity of almost every civilized country on the face of the globe came into exercise, more or less, on the subject, and yet nothing of practical importance to the world in the way of travel on land or water was achieved until 1807, when Robert Fulton brought

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the steamboat into every-day use. That great event dates backward only eighty-four years.

There was then but one solitary little locomotive in existence, that of the bold, erratic inventor, Richard Trevithick of London, and this was powerless except on a level surface; it could neither make steam nor draw a heavy load. The following year, 1808, Trevithick constructed a short, crude tramway track in London, upon which he experimented with a small steam-carriage, named "Catch-me-who-can." He subsequently made an unsuccessful attempt to carry a tunnel under the Thames river; and he invented many valuable devices but brought only a few into public notice, and reaped very little advantage from any of them.

The germ of the knowledge of the immense expansive power of steam and its possible utility may be found in the far background. A steamengine is believed to have existed twenty-one centuries ago, when Alexandria was the centre of the commerce of the world, the home of Euclid the great geometrician, and of many wise and learned men, a city containing the wealthiest and most civilized population extant. Hero was an eminent writer of the time, and he has placed upon permanent record certain descriptions of a number of unique machines, and sketched a curious common-sense method of opening temple doors by the action of fire on an altar, which is said to embrace all the elements, with the single exception that the expanding fluid was air instead of steam, of the machine invented or reinvented by the second Marquis of Worcester in 1663, generally regarded as the first real steam-engine in history.

Traces are found all along the centuries of the slow growth into form of the idea which has resulted in appropriating to practical uses the forces of steam. In 1571, for instance, Matthesius described in one of his sermons a machine through which "tremendous effects" could be produced by the "volcanic action of a small quantity of confined vapor." Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter, scientist, and inventor, described a steam-gun in the early part of the same century which he called "Architonnerre," made of copper. The steam was generated by permitting water in a closed vessel to fall on surfaces heated by a charcoal fire, and the sudden expansion would eject a ball of considerable size. In Spain, as early as 1543, Blasco da Garay, a Spanish naval officer under Charles V., is reported to have moved a ship at the rate of two or three miles an hour with an ap paratus of which a "vessel of boiling water" formed a part; but the king shook his head and frowningly forbade its repetition, saying he "could not have his liege subjects scalded to death with hot water on his ships!" England in 1648 was convulsed with laughter over a witty discourse from

the learned bishop of Chester, in which he recommended the application of the power of confined steam to the construction of a "flying castle in the air," to the chiming of bells, to the reeling of yarn, and to the rocking of the cradle.

It remained, however, for Edward Somerset, the second Marquis of Worcester, to first apply the expansive properties of steam to actual work --the lifting of water for necessary purposes at Vauxhall, near London. The life of this nobleman forms one of the most romantic chapters in English history. He spent a large fortune in experiments, and his steam

engine was unquestionably a most wonderful and valuable production. But he failed in convincing his contemporaries of its importance, or in forming a commercial company to introduce it to public uses, the men of his time not being sufficiently intelligent to appreciate or understand its worth. He was a learned, studious, upright, public-spirited man of genius, and a skillful, persevering, far-sighted mechanic. But his fate was that of nearly all early inventors; he died in penury, unsuccessful.

These modern marvels of the railway before our eyes, which have become such matter-of-fact, commonplace associations with our every-day life, have not sprung into existence-as it is well to remember-through any miraculous agency. They have unfolded out of the past, from roots firmly planted in a remoter past, and it has required ages of human ingenuity and heroic effort and supreme patience to make such a condition of affairs possible. The story of scientific experiments, experiences, and heart-breaking failures, with graphic sketches of the long line of clever, ambitious, and disappointed men who have figured in them, would fill a score of volumes of singular and thrilling interest. The thought which has survived through the centuries, although frequently half-strangled, has continued to grow, and each fresh mind that has taken it up and turned it over has contributed more or less to its vitality, strength, and magnitude, until it has finally gained the momentum resulting in the evolution and development within the last six decades of the immense railway interest of the United States, upon which over two millions of human beings are now dependent for their daily bread.

It was found in the early years of this century much easier to construct useful steam-engines than steamboats; but the moving of land-carriages by steam was far more difficult than either of the two. Tramways were first built for the transit of coal in the mining districts of England during the period between 1602 and 1649. They were made across fields, the proprietors of which received a certain rent for the "wayleave," which term is still employed in arrangements of this character. The tracks were simply wooden beams, and the vehicle was drawn by one horse. A hundred years afterward an important improvement was introduced in the substitution of cast-iron rails, fixed in parallel lines on cross wooden sleepers. These tramways were multiplied rapidly toward the end of the eighteenth century, and large sums of money were expended in their construction. They were so far perfected that the inventors of locomotives had very little to do in the preparation of hard, smooth roads, for their experiments in propelling wheeled vehicles. Notwithstanding the interest taken in the railway projects of Richard Trevithick, the public at large