This was the passage up the stream, on its trial trip to Albany, of Robert Fulton's steamboat, the " Clermont." It came almost unheralded on the afternoon of September 11, and to most beholders must have been an had been to object quite as astonishing as Hudson's "Half-Moon" the Indian aborigines two hundred years before. Although it was known to specially well informed people that some surprising experiments had been made in the waters surrounding New York City with a vessel propelled by steam, the rustic classes had never heard of the ship. The " Clermont " performed the voyage to Albany at the speed of about five miles an hour, making only one stop, at Chancellor Livingston's seat on the upper river.
The actual running time from New York to Albany was thirty-two hours, and from Albany to NewYork thirty hours. After this triumphant achievement of the purpose for which it was built the " Clermont " made regular trips to and from Albany as a packet boat. In these first days of steam naviTHE "CLERMONT. gation on the Hudson intense prejudice was h a r b o r e d against the " Clermont " by the owners of trading sloops, who feared that the successful operation of steamboats would render their property worthless; and it is recorded that attempts were repeatedly made to sink or disable her, which caused the legislature to pass an act prohibiting such practices under serious penalties.
It is not improbable that some of the market sloops plying between New York and the Westchester villages were engaged in these reprehensible enterprises against Fulton's boat. Allison, in his History of