and Mr. Fenno's gunsmith shops, almost daily, and endeavored to manufacture a small air-gun."
Among the acquaintances of Robert Fulton at this time was a young man, about eighteen years of age, named Christopher Gumpf, who used frequently to accompany his father in his fishing excursions on the Conestoga. Mr. Gumpf, Sen., being an experienced angler, readily consented to allow Robert to join himself and his son in these expeditions, and made the two boys earn their pleasure by pushing the boat about the stream, as he desired to move from point to point. As the means of propulsion was simply a pole, the labor was very severe, and Robert soon became tired of it. Not wishing, however, to give up his pleasant fishing trips, he determined to devise some means of lightening the labor.
"He absented himself a week, having gone to Little Britain township to spend a few days at his aunt's; and while there he planned and completed a small working model of a fishing boat, with paddle-wheels. On leaving his aunt's, he placed the model in the garret, with a request that it should not be destroyed. Many years afterward, that simple model was the attraction of friends, and became, instead of lumber in the garret, an ornament in the aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That model was the result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating on a pivot as a rudder; and Fulton's first invention was tried on the Conestoga River, opposite Rockford, in the presence of Peter and Christopher Gumpf. The boys were so pleased with the experiment, that they hid the paddles in the bushes on the shore, lest others might use and break them, and