FIRST STEAMBOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.--Nicholas J. Roosevelt was the
first to take a steamboat down the great river. His boat was built
at Pittsburgh, in the year 1811, under an arrangement with Fulton and
Livingston, from Fulton's plans. It was called the "New Orleans," was
about 200 tons burden, and was propelled by a stern-wheel, assisted,
when the wind was favorable, by sails carried on two masts. The hull
was 138 feet long, 30 feet beam, and the cost of the whole, including
engines, was about $40,000. The builder, with his family, an engineer,
a pilot, and six "deck hands," left Pittsburgh in October, 1811,
reaching Louisville in about seventy hours (steaming about ten miles
an hour), and New Orleans in fourteen days, steaming from Natchez.


THE EXPLORATIONS OF FREMONT.--- Among the earliest efforts of Fremont,
after he had tried and been sickened by the sea, were his experiences as
a surveyor and engineer on railroad lines from Charleston to Augusta,
Ga., and Charleston to Cincinnati. Then he accompanied an army
detachment on a military reconnoissance of the mountainous Cherokee
country in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, made in the depth of
winter. In 1838-9 he accompanied M. Nicollet in explorations of the
country between the Missouri and the British line, and his first detail
of any importance, after he had been commissioned by President Van
Buren, was to make an examination of the river Des Moines, then on the
Western frontier. In 1841 he projected his first trans-continental
expedition, and left Washington May 2, 1842, and accomplished the object
of his trip, examined the South Pass, explored the Wind River mountains,
ascended in August, the highest peak of that range, now known as
Fremont's Peak, and returned, after an absence of four months. His