The use of fat pine wood for fuel made a particularly impressive spectacle when night overtook the voyagers, for the sparks flew in a ceaseless stream and warranted the statement that " It was a monster, moving on the river, defying wind and tide, and breathing flames and smoke. ' ' Such wa s the progenitor of all the steam-craft in the world, and this the death-warrant to the fleets of sails that used to gladden the bosom of the Hudson. True, the execution of the warrant was delayed for more than half a century, or rather was accomplished by insensible degrees, so that no definite date can be assigned to it-- but accomplished it finally is.

Fulton and the Hudson River Steamboat 127

When the saiHng vessels had resigned their jxissenger service, as well as much of the freight traffic, to the new-fangled fire-eaters that infested the ri\-er, a class of boats developed that never had their like on earth before and probably ne\'er will again. They came by the scores, monopolising the business until the advent of the railwav. They were built for speed and were

" CAR OF NEPTUNE," lSo8

barbaric in their gorgeous display of gingerbread and gold. The taste and temperament -- in a word, the personality -- of the average American citizen of antebellum times was made concrete in the Hudson River steamboat. It somehow suggested the man who might buy an onyx mantel-piece for the satisfaction of putting his feet on it. Those great, resplendent, costly, comfortless, tasteless vessels, overloaded with ornament and magnificently vulgar, were the pride of the towns from which they hailed, and each boat had its retinue of eager partisans, always ready to engage in a wordy