Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the brick work, which was frequently thrown down by heaving in the wood. I was about to put one in our shop, and had it partly made, when I learned from a man who had tried one, that it was difficult to keep it tight, and of no real advantage; I then abandoned it. UPRIGHT BOILERS A FAILURE FOR PROPELLING STEAMBOATS. Upright boilers were tried on the steamer Lafourche, which was built at Cincinnati about thirty-five years ago. I was informed that on her way to New Orleans, she either burst her boiler or collapsed her flues, and had to be towed back to Cincinnati, to be overhauled. She could not stem the current to any advantage, and on this account, the upright boilers were thrown out, and others put in their place. The steamer Nebraska, when she first came out, had an upright tubular boiler, having the fire box and ash pit within it, but not having a sufficiency of power, her engine and boilers were thrown out, and a horizontal double-flued boiler, and new engine, 'put in their place, when she gave entire satisfaction. The steamer Advance No. 1 had one upright tubular boiler, but it would not make a sufficiency of steam to run the boat against the current. Another boiler of a similar kind was put in alongside. I went on her up the Allegheny river seven or eight miles, on her trial trip, but the water was too low; she came back to Pittsburgh, and started up again the next high water; when about one hundred miles up the boiler gave out at thebottom of the flues in the fire box. A hole was then drilled in the bottom of the boiler, between the flues, and the mud was found to be 1J inches or more thick in the bottom, and owing to this, the boiler was burnt, which was the cause of its springing a leak around the tubes at the bottom and putting out the fires. As we made the ...