high pressure engines

J. C. Hoadley Portable Steam Engine
Vintage Machinery / Photo: Glenn Duspiva

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold, cloud, attracting and condensing mountain tops send forth from their basis as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus nature, as with a low pressure engine, carries on its vast schemes; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853

Revised and corrected in the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army. Note the change from low to high pressure:

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold cloud-attracting and condensing mountain-tops send forth from their bases, as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus Nature, as with a high-pressure engine, carries on its vast scheme; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.

Herman Melville:

His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent satisfaction hobbled away. --The Confidence-Man

Herman Melville's sister Catherine (Kate) married John Chipman Hoadley on September 15, 1853. Hoadley had been active in Pittsfield since 1848; in partnership with Gordon McKay he operated a machine shop and foundry with "an extensive reputation for steam engines" (Springfield Republican, 22 January 1852).

McKay and Hoadley sold their Pittsfield shop in February 1852 and relocated to Lawrence, Massachusetts.