Captain Ogle's was a kind of mail-coach in
appearance, with seats for six inside passengers
and eight outside; but attached to the rear was
all the mechanism for providing and applying
the motive power.

How they tried and tried to get the mechanism
into a small compass, to do a great deal ol
work with a few shovels of coal, and to make
the wheels take a good bite of the roads! Mr.
Gurney and some moneyed friends expended
thirty thousand pounds in inventing and building
steam-carriages. Mr. Hancock's invention,
which he modestly christened " The
Infant," ran for hire as a steam-stage-coach
between London and Stratford. Colonel
Macerone's carriage made many trips in and
around the metropolis. Mr. Russell's ran for
some time between Glasgow and Paisley. At
one time, a Steam Carriage and Waggon
Company was started, for the application of capital
on a large scale to this matter; but—perhaps
luckily for the shareholders—nothing came of it
except a few prospectuses and advertisements.

There are more than twenty thousand miles of
turnpike-road in England and Wales; men wish
to try whether steam-horses can travel on those
roads, without rails. The idea is a natural one.
Railways cannot penetrate to all towns and
villages. There must, under any circumstances, be
towns, nay, whole districts, left to be served by
common roads. The steam-horse can do a portion
of the work more quickly and effectively than
the living horse. Hence the numerous
inventions touched upon above, one and all of which,
however, commercially failed. Sometimes, horses
were frightened; sometimes, the road tolls were
made enormously high; sometimes, the machines
were too heavy, or the difficulty of getting
water was too great. That a long steam-carriage
journey has been made, however, we shall see.

If any people in this world were ever
surprised, it must have been the Highlanders, when,
five years ago, they saw the Earl of Caithness
come among them in, or rather on, his steam-
carriage. The earl was not his own machinist.
His machine was invented by Mr. Rickett, and
was intended to carry three or four persons at
ten miles an hour on any ordinary road. Starting
from Inverness one fine day, with his lady
countess, a clergyman, and the inventor, the earl
got over the first fourteen miles, to Beauly, in
an hour and twenty minutes, including a few
stoppages. Then, on a part of the road where
he could see a long way ahead, he attained a
speed of eighteen miles an hour, going up the
hill and down the hill in gallant style. After a
night's rest, he set off again, ascending the steep
incline from Golspie to Dunrobin Castle, and
thence to Holmsdale. The Ord of Caithness
came next: a mountain with a road so terribly
steep—one in seven for several miles—that the
people made sure of the discomfiture of the
noble charioteer. Not so, however; the engine
panted and puffed, but did its work, and readied
the summit without any stoppage. Then, the
descent was made to Berridale Glen, with brakes
that kept the velocity wiihin limited bounds.

At last he entered Wick, which turned out in
style. After an hour's delay, on he went again,
and arrived before nightfall at Ballogell Castle,
his own residence, not many miles distant from
John o'Groat's. So far as we know, this is
the longest journey in a steam-carriage (a
hundred and fifty miles) ever made on a common
road. The machine resembled a sort of
hooded chaise with a small locomotive behind
it, and occupied altogether about as much space
as a horse and chaise. The earl took the proper
driver's place, at the right hand of the front
seat; the lady, we will suppose, was seated
between him and the clergyman; Mr. Rickett,
on a small platform in the rear, attended to
the creature-comforts of the engine in the
matter of coal and water. The engine
carried water enough for fifteen miles, and coal
for thirty. The charioteer could turn on and
off the steam at pleasure, as well as work the
front rudder-wheel and the brake; insomuch that
the duties of the assistant were limited to those
of a stoker. The whole affair, living freight
excluded, weighed a ton and a half. The
puffing gave a little fright to one or two horses
met on the road; but no other discomfiture
occurred. During the descent to Berridale
Glen, three out of the four persons alighted and
walked, to lessen the impetus and aid the drag
or brake.

The thing can be done, and possibly a
commercially-profitable system may arise out
of such inventions. At present, the tendency
is to construct very strong vehicles that will
draw heavy weights at slow speed, under
circumstances that would severely test horseflesh.
Some time back a heavy marine boiler
was drawn from Messrs. Laird's works at
Birkenhead, to the harbour, by an engine
which its inventor, Mr. Taylor, dignified with
the name of a Steam-Elephant. Another of
these elephants was set to work at Devonport
Dockyard; a third was ordered by the Dutch
government to aid in some work at Flushing.
One of these monsters carries a steam crane
on his back, lifts up with it ever so many
tons, deposits the load in a row of trucks, and
runs along merrily with the whole affair.
Another inventor, his bosom swelling with
praiseworthy emulation, invented a steam-bull .
competitor to the steam-elephant. One of
Bray's traction engines, as these ponderous
steam-carriages are now frequently called,
employed to supersede or supplement hand labour
it Woolwich Dockyard, on one occasion dragged
about the yard one of the boilers for the
Caledonia, weighing nearly thirty tons; it then
wheeled itself off to the foundry, took up an
armour-plate weighing seventeen tons, conveyed
it to the travelling-crane, took up two more
plates, and then promenaded triumphantly round
the yard, turning the corners almost as easily
is a perambulator. When relieved of its heavy
load, this engine ran about the yard at the rate
of ten miles an hour, and did all sorts of
wonderful things. Another maker of these massive
enginess has been sending some of them out to