steam in the boiler not exceeding fifty pounds on the square inch, with several other conditions.

For this premium five engines were entered; the competition was finally between the Rocket and the Novelty. On the day appointed, an accident happened to the Novelty, which prevented the trial. But, as many persons attended, the Rocket was brought out to lessen their disappointment, and with a car attached to it, containing thirty persous, was moved at the rate of from twenty-four to thirty miles per hour, to the great gratification of all present. The next day the trial for the prize commenced.

The Rocket weighed four tons, five cwt., and, including her tender and two carriages loaded with stone, carried an entire mass of seventeen tons. She travelled in the first experiment thirty miles in two hours, fourteen minutes and eight seconds, which was at the rate of thirteen four-tenths miles per hour. In the second experiment she travelled the same distance, at the rate of fourteen two-tenths miles per hour. The Novelty, including her water-tank, water and fuel, weighed three tons, seventeen cwt. fourteen pounds; and had a load assigned her in proportion, amounting to six tons, seventeen cwt., her whole mass in motion was ten tons, fourteen hundred weight, fourteen pounds—with this she moved at the rate of fifteen miles per hour, but another accident put a stop to her progress, and she was then withdrawn. The prize was, finally, assigned to the Rocket, she having more than complied with all the requisitions. Subsequent experiments, with both these engines, have confirmed all that was promised from the first; and other engines, upon similar plans, have been constructed, and perfectly succeed; no doubt is now left as to the efficiency and speed of these engines, when well constructed. The Arrow locomotive, on the plan of the Rocket, carried a gross weight of thirty-three tons from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours, twenty-five minutes, including two stoppages to take in water. On the level and straight part of the line, she moved at the rate of sixteen miles per hour; on her return with the engine-tender, and six persons, together with two carriages and thirty persons, and her own weight, making together thirteen tous, she performed the whole trip in one hour and forty-six minutes, including stoppages; her speed varied at the rate of from eighteen to twenty-five miles per hour, the day was wet, and the rail, in places, very dirty, circumstances by no means favourable.

On the 1st December, 1830, the Planet locomotive, took the first load of goods from Manchester to Liverpool, the train VOL. VII. NO. 13.

24

was eighteen wagons, containing one hundred and thirty-five bags and bales of American cotton, two hundred barrels of flour, sixty-five sacks of salt, thirty-four sacks of malt, weighing, together, fifty-one tons, eleven cwt. one qr. To this must be added the weight of wagons and oil cloths, twenty-eight · tons, eight cwt. three qrs. less; the tender, water, and fuel, four tons, and fifteen persons on the train, one ton ; a total weight of exactly eighty tons, exclusive of the engine, about six tons more. The journey was performed in two hours, fifty-four minutes, including three stoppages of five minutes each, under the disadvantage of an adverse wind and additional friction in the wheels and axles, owing to their being new. On the 15th December last, there were on the road ten locomotives and another soon expected; others were to be added. The steamers on the Rail-way had conveyed about sixty thousand passengers, performing nine hundred and fifty-four trips between Liverpool and Manchester, from the 16th of September to the 17th of December, inclusive, and in only eleven instances exceeded by half an hour the time fixed for the performance.

Messrs. Braithwaite & Erickson, have contracted to deliver to the company by the 15th of June next, two locomotive steamengines, at £1000 each, on the principle of the Novelty, which was of their construction. The weight of each engine, with the requisite quantity of water in the boiler not to exceed five tons; to draw a gross weight of forty tons from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours, being assisted up the inclined plane on an allowance made for lost speed at that place. The pressure of steam in the boiler not to exceed fifty pounds per square inch; not to consume more than half a pound of coke per ton, drawn one mile, and to be kept in repair by the builders twelve months.

On the Bolton and Leigh rail-way, which branches from the Manchester and Liverpool rail-way, the Sans Pareil, weighing four and a half tons, one of the engines that competed for the prize of £500, at Rainhill, drew up, on an inclined plane, rising one in seventy-two, or a fraction over seventy-three feet in the mile, a gross load of fifteen tons, at the rate of nine miles per hour.

There are already several branches of the Liverpool and Manchester rail-way; separate branches lead to Bolton and Leigh, to Wigan and Newton, to Warrington, to Runcorn Gap, opposite the town of Runcorn, and to St. Helena. Thus the great artery is receiving from the rich veins.

We will conclude this article with some remarks upon the Charleston and Hamburg rail-road. It cannot fail to strike an

attentive observer, how eminently Charleston is, by nature, calculated for an important commercial emporium. At the junction of two rivers, the Ashley and Cooper, and just below the union of the Wando river with the Cooper, the harbour spreads out into a beautiful basin, covering a space between three and four miles square, protected from the sea in all directions, except the South-east, where it admits an easy entrance, at the distance of eight or ten miles from the city, for vessels drawing seventeen feet water. The coast is a gradually shelving, sandy-bottom, so well known to navigators, and so little dangerous, that vessels are rarely stranded. The anchorage in the harbor is safe, and the largest ships are kept afloat in the stream at the lowest tide. At the wharves, where they receive and discharge their loads, they are either always afloat, or grounded on a soft, muddy bottom. The Cooper, the Ashley, and the Wando rivers, fertilize in their course a large body of cultivated and valuable lands, and afford an easy and safe transportation to their sources for vessels of from fifty to eighty tons.

By inland navigation, between the islands parallel with the coast, a safe communication is effected with the Santee river on the North-east, which, with its tributaries, flows through the whole length of the State; and with the Savannah river on the South-west, which forms the entire boundary of South Carolina in that direction, dividing it from Georgia. Except NewYork, there is no port in the United States, all things considered, more advantageously located for commerce. But where nature has done much, art has, as yet, effected little. The only artificial communication of importance, is the Santee canal, which is twenty-one miles long, connecting the Santee and the Cooper rivers. But this canal, though remarkably well executed, has been unfortunately located, and has failed of profit to the original stockholders.

The rich inhabitants of the back-country of South-Carolina, and of those parts of North-Carolina and Georgia which trade with Charleston, are obliged, at great expense, to transport their produce and receive, in return, their supplies; weeks, and not unfrequently, months, have elapsed before places not more distant, in a direct line, than one hundred and twenty miles, could effect these communications, and then, and at all times with great expense; and at no time without great risk of loss, and great delay. The profits of the planter, or what ought to be his profits, are but too often consumed in the expense of transportation, and the merchant finds it impossible to calculate with that certainty, which his operations require, the time he may expect arrivals or hear of his shipments having reached their points of destina

tion. Capital, which would otherwise be active, is thus dormant a large portion of time, and, consequently, more of it is required than would suffice, with more certain, rapid and safe communications, for the same amount of business. Travellers-and people must travel, if not for pleasure or for health, at least for business-fare as badly as goods; for if they move at all faster, it is still with a slow, tiresome pace, consuming time that might be profitably employed, and expending sums that prudent economy would readily make profitable. We will neither attempt to enumerate all the disadvantages of the present cominunications between Charleston and the surrounding and interior country, nor all the advantages that would result from improved communications.

Our climate presents an obstacle of no small magnitude to transportation either for goods or for persons, during, at least, three months in the year. The rivers are unhealthy, and often too low. The roads are sandy, heavy and hot; the labourers and the animals engaged in transportation are with difficulty brought to perform their task, and but too often sink beneath it. The traveller meets with all these difficulties and is made uncomfortable, and not unfrequently sick even unto death, as he heavily and slowly moves through the almost Pontine marshes of the alluvial country near the sea-board. What may we not promise ourselves, if we can, for all these impediments to our prosperity and comfort, substitute a communication which, like the rail-roads we have noticed, will at once diminish space as far as it opposes locomotion, by increasing velocity, certainty, safety, cheapness and pleasure. The Charleston and Hamburg rail-road will certainly effect these objects through its whole extent, and in every direction to which its branches may be extended; where weeks are now occupied, days will suffice, and for days, we may almost take hours; dimes will effect then what now requires dollars.

The exports of Charleston amount to ten millions of dollars per annum, whilst the direct foreigu imports are scarcely more than a tenth of that amount. The merchants in the interior cannot postpone until the fall, their supplies for the season, and, as they cannot risk the approach to the city, as early as is required in the summer, to purchase them and have them transported to their respective homes by the present tedious and expensive modes, they prefer sailing to New-York, and laying them in at that place.

If we examine the large amount of produce received from the interior, and the yet larger that may be expected by an easy communication; if we advert to the fact that when the pros

perity of places so connected is increased that each increases the other, that commerce springs up, additional soils are cultivated, riches are accumulated, population is increased, travelling becomes common; if we collect these and other important observations from the history of places that are most prosperous and if we reflect that the majority of mankind can only afford luxuries and pleasures that are within a very moderate expense, we shall be at no loss to trace these effects to rational causes, and apply them to our own situation; nor will we deem those too sanguine who anticipate much from that enterprise which has set on foot the great work we are considering. Those who wish to see on what the calculations of the produce and goods to be transported are founded, may find them in the Reports of the South-Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company on that subject, and we are confident that looking forward a few years, those calculations are far short of the truth.

Let us now examine the proposed route of the rail-road, and the mode of construction adopted. It is an established principle of these roads, that where the transportation on them is equal both ways, they should be level. That where it exceeds in one direction, that in the opposite by five times, it should descend from a level in the direction of the greatest amount of transportation, at the rate of fifteen feet to the mile, and in certain other proportions according to the difference of transportation in the opposite direction. The data for these calculations are the known laws of gravitation, and the ascertained resistance of the wheels of a car on their axle and on the rail. The gravity, acts against the ascending, in favour of the descending line, in the proportious of the length of the road to its perpendicular height from a level, so that if the resistance to be overcome on the level be ascertained, as it is on a well-constructed rail-way, to be one in every two hundred; or that a force of one pound over a pulley, or a power equal to that, will draw two hundred pounds, then whenever the inclination of the road is such, that the load would have a tendency to run down of one pound, the gravity and friction would be equal, and the power to force it up would be doubled, which in this case, would be an ascent of thirty-two feet per mile. Thus a horse can draw ten tons on a level rail-road, and only five tons against an ascent of thirty-two feet per mile; supposing him in both cases to exert the same force; it cost as much labour, therefore, on such a road to go up one mile ascending thirty-two feet as to go two miles on a level. The surveys and examinations of our rail-road shows that the country is most favourable for the trade in the direction we desire it, and that, with a very