The Arkansas advocate., 1835-07-03
From he National Mteligencer. \ REMARKABLE PROPHECY


 A strong suspicion naturally and justly attends the announcement of any prophet ic declaration, afier 1t has been fulfilled and in all such cases very convincing eyi- dence Is required to satily the reader or nearer, that the foretellng was actually prior to the performance. In the case to l which the attention of our readers is now invited, this evidence Is abundant and con- elusive. We have the best possible reason to know that the following prophecy was made long before its ful6lment, iuasmuch as 1t was published in this paper, more than twenty years ago ]; and we remember 1t was made the subject of much sneering com ment at the time. Mr. Evans, the man who made 1t, was accounted insane, not on- I iy by the public generally, but also by the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Maryland, to which he applied for aid in carrying into effect the projects set forth in the prophecy, of which he not only perceived and nlain- tained the practicability, but had actually devised the means. He finally obtained a patent for fourteen years but he had no capitalist who had confidence enough in his project to make advances-and the patent slumbered on his hands, without benefit 10 himself or the world. He died poor, neg lected, and probably heart-broken, like ma ny an ingenious man before him. In us- ing the word prophecy" we do not mean to convey the idea that Evans possessed any supernatural gift or power divination. What he fortod was merely the result of his sagacity, mechanical ingenuity, and knowledge of the properties of steam, to the investigation of which a large portion of his life was devoted. As in the case of Arkwright, who acquired fame and fortune by carrying into operation the inventions of others, while unrewarded, later and more fortunate men have reaped the advantages to which Evans and others, his contempo- raries, pointed out the way.
 'sThe time will come when people will travel ln stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour.
 "A carriage will ssSouf from Washing ton in the morning, stIfes Ressengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dlae+at Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day.
 ''To accomplish this. two sets of rail- ways will be laid, so nearly level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from horizontal line, made of wood or iron or smooth paths of broken stone or gravel, with rail to guide the carrages, so that they may pass each other in different directions, and travel by night as we'll as by day: and the passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do in steamboats.,n * * #I
 "A steam engine that consumes from quarter 10 half cord Of wood, will drive carnage one hundred and eighty miles in twelve hours, with twenty or thirty passen- gers, and will not consume six gallons of water. The carriages, will not be oyer- loaded with fuel or water.
 These engines will drive boats ten or twelve miles per hour, and there will be many hundred steamboats running on the Mississippi, and other western waters, as prophesied thirty years ago, by one who could predict them better than the poet can now. But the velocity of boats through the water can never he made to equal the velocity of carriages through air, because the resistence of water is eight hundred times the resistance of air.
 ''Posterity will not be able to discover why the legislature, or Congress, did not grant the inventor such protection as might have enabled him to put in operation these improvements sooner, he having asked nei- ther money or monoply of any existing thing.
 "OLIVER EVANS"