NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1873. NEW YORK: EVENING POST STEAM PRESSES, 41 NASSAU STREET, COR. LIBERTY. 1873. With Respects of the Author, 155 Broadway, N. Y....

During the maple sugar season of the spring of 1858, a well-to-do farmer, of western New York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller, in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. Although advised by his builders to substitute the common four-bladed propellers, he adhered to his original design, and with one propeller at either side of t

Soon after the Act of April, 1871, to foster and develop the inland commerce of the State, the steam canal-boat Cathcart was tried. She is like the Niagara of 1859, and has not been continued in the trade. The canal-boat George Barnard , afterward called the Andrew H. Dawson , was tried, and has run through the season of 1872. She has a common propeller in her bow, with a recess from the water-line inclined to twenty feet aft to the bottom. Her propeller, therefore, forces the current against th