Macgregor Laird, Scottish explorer and shipbuilder, written after travelling by steamship up the Niger River in West Africa between 1832 and 1834. We have the power in our hands, moral, physical, and mechanical; the first, based on the Bible; the second, upon the wonderful adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon race to all climates, situations, and circumstances . the third, bequeathed [given] to us by the immortal James Watt. By his invention [of the steam engine] every river is laid open to us, time and distance are shortened. If his spirit is allowed to witness the success of his invention here on earth, I can conceive no application of it that would meet his approbation [approval] more than seeing the mighty streams of the Mississippi and the Amazon, the Niger and the Nile, the Indus and the Ganges, stemmed by hundreds of steam-vessels, carrying the glad tidings of “peace and good will towards men" into the dark places of the earth which are now filled with cruelty. This power, which has only been in existence for a quarter of a century, has rendered rivers truly “the highway of nations," and made easy what it would have been difficult if not impossible, to accomplish with out it.... Source: Macgregor Laird and R. A. K. Oldfield, Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger in the Steam-Vessels Quorra and Alburkah in 1832, 1833, 1834, Volume II, London, Richard Bentley, 1837

Macgregor Laird, Scottish explorer and shipbuilder, written after travelling by steamship up the Niger River in West Africa between 1832 and 1834. We have the power in our hands, moral, physical, and mechanical; the first, based on the Bible; the second, upon the wonderful adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon race to all climates, situations, and circumstances . the third, bequeathed [given] to us by the immortal James Watt. By his invention [of the steam engine] every river is laid open to us, time and distance are shortened. If his spirit is allowed to witness the success of his invention here on earth, I can conceive no application of it that would meet his approbation [approval] more than seeing the mighty streams of the Mississippi and the Amazon, the Niger and the Nile, the Indus and the Ganges, stemmed by hundreds of steam-vessels, carrying the glad tidings of “peace and good will towards men" into the dark places of the earth which are now filled with cruelty. This power, which has only been in existence for a quarter of a century, has rendered rivers truly “the highway of nations," and made easy what it would have been difficult if not impossible, to accomplish with out it.... Source: Macgregor Laird and R. A. K. Oldfield, Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger in the Steam-Vessels Quorra and Alburkah in 1832, 1833, 1834, Volume II, London, Richard Bentley, 1837