sloop Heinrich, making the voyage to New York and back once a week, and
taking his first lessons in practical seamanship.

Wonderful changes had been developed along the beautiful Hudson during
these twelve years. People in the country said New York was getting to
be a very big, and a very wicked city. Already her skirmishers, in a
line of little houses, were pushed beyond the canal, and were
obliterating the cow-paths. The honest old Dutch settlers shrugged their
shoulders, and said it was not a good sign to see people get rich so
fast. Indeed, they declared that these fast and extravagant New Yorkers,
who were building great houses and sending big ships to all parts of the
world, would bring ruin on the country.

A ship of five hundred tons had been added to the old London line, and
her great size was an object of curiosity. But the man who projected her
was regarded by careful merchants as very reckless, and not a safe man
to trust.

That which troubled the minds of these peaceable old settlers most was
Mr. Fulton and his steamboat. Steam they declared to be a very
dangerous thing. And, as for this Mr. Fulton, he should be sent to an
insane asylum, before he destroyed all his friends, and lost all his
money in this dangerous undertaking. He might navigate the river with a
big tea-kettle in the bottom of his boat, but he would be sure to set
all the houses along the river on fire. And who was to pay the damages?
Steam was, however, a reality, and the little Fire Fly went puffing and
splashing up and down the river, alarming and astonishing the people
along its banks. She could make the voyage from the upper end of the
Tappan Zee to New York in a day, no matter how the wind blew. Hanz
Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody