As to the three steam vehicles, they could not accomplish the course. The Dion carriage, which had run the Paris-Bordeaux course, and which was driven by M. Bouton, stopped at Suresnes, even before the start was made, in consequence of a rupture in its large new pneumatic tyres, which M. Michelin had fitted to it without having studied and perfected them sufficiently.
The two other steam vehicles were almost identical brakes, especially constructed for this race, weighing about three tons when made ready for the trip, developing about eighteen horse-power when run in compound, and probably a little more than thirty when run by direct action from the large cylinder. Of these two powerful machines, one, in charge of M. de Dion himself, could not go further than Montereau, about eighty kilometres from Paris.[1] The other, of which my brother and I had taken charge, with a fireman and two machinists, took eighty-five hours to reach Lyons. During this long trip (we had only twelve hours' rest, from Friday midnight till Saturday noon), we spent forty-seven hours on repairs, on the open road part of the time, and that the greater part of it (the night of Thursday to Friday, and of Saturday to Sunday), in a drenching rain. It goes without saying that, at the end of a dozen hours so lost, we made not the least pretence of catching up with our more fortunate competitors, but we wished to make a fight for the honour of the steam-principle by at least finishing the run, a purpose which we did not relinquish until the machine was entirely crippled at Lyons.
Almost every part of the mechanism was out of working order, and we had every break-down conceivable, except an absolute explosion of the boiler. We had even carried away a piece of the frame, which we replaced by means of an iron bar, forged by ourselves in a village.
I shall not attempt to give here complete details of this eventful journey, of which, however, I made most careful notes at the time. Exhaustive enumeration of all that happened to us
- ↑ An illustration of this car is included in the chapter on Steam Cars.
