Trevithick took in high dudgeon, and chose to
consider as a severe reflection on his engineering.
His Cornish blood was excited; and, with his usual
impetuosity, he set to work to disprove the assertion
without any regard to his own interests or those of
the subscribers. He is said to have adopted the
absurd contrivance of making a hole in the roof of
the tunnel at low water, and pushing up a series of
joint rods, which were to be received by a party in a
boat, and then observed from the shore. On the
prosecution of this scheme Trevithick was engaged
below, and as delays ensued in fitting together the
rods, the gulley formed by the opening in the roof at
length admitted so much water as to make retreat
necessary. With an inborn courage, worthy of a
better cause, he refused to move first, but sent the
men before, and very nearly fell a sacrifice to his
devotion. It has been already observed that the
driftway was parallel to the bed of the river, and
therefore curved. It necessarily happened that the
water would lodge, as in a syphon, at the bottom of
a curve, at which part, on Trevithick's arrival, he
found so much water as hardly to enable him to
escape; and as he got up the slope on the other
side, and climbed the ladder, the water rose with him
at his neck. The work thus ended, after having
reached 1011 feet, being within 100 feet of its
proposed terminus, and is a melancholy monument at
once of his folly and his skill."

Many great schemes and notable creations
came after this practical failure and scientific
success of the Thames Tunnel; but the chief
part of what was done went to the advancement
and better working of the Cornish mines, the
increased prosperity of which is principally due
to Richard Trevithick and his engines. "To
the use of high-pressure steam, in conjunction
with the cylindrical boiler, also invented by Mr.
Trevithick," says Mr. Williams, one of the principal
mine-owners in Cornwall, " I have no hesitation
in saying that the greatly increased duty
of our Cornish pumping-engines since the time
of Watt is mainly owing." The working power
now attained doubles and trebles that of the old
Boulton and Watt engine, the cylindrical
boiler saving at least one-third in the quantity
of coal previously consumed. Certainly the man
who first put the fire in the boiler instead of
under it, who introduced the system of high-
pressure steam, made the first locomotive,
trebled the working power of engines, and saved
one-third of coal in the working, did great
things for the world of steam.

Now we come to the most romantic and
stirring period of Trevithick's career. In 1811
M. Uvillé", a Swiss gentleman, living in Lima
came to England to see what could be done for
the silver mines in the Peruvian mountains
which had been abandoned from the impossibility
of getting machinery out there which
could clear them of water. But M. Uvillé did
not meet with much encouragement. The
difficulty of transporting cumbrous machinery
on the backs of feeble llamas over the Cordilleras,
and the difficulty of working the engines
even if they could be got there, seemed imperative.
Watt and the rest gave no hope, am
Uvillé was in despair. On the eve of departing
from England with the conviction that the
water in the Peruvian mines must stay there till
the day of judgment, the Swiss gentleman
chanced to see a small working model of Trevithick's
engine in a shop window near Fitzroy-square.
This model he carried out with him,
and saw it working successfully on the high
mountain ridge of the Sierra de Pasco. Flushed
with hope and busy with projects, Uvillé returned
to England, having obtained from the
viceroy the privilege of working some of the
abandoned mines. On his way hither he was
speaking with a fellow-traveller of his plans,
his model, and his desire to discover the maker
of that model; whereon, his fellow-passenger,
Mr. Teague, said quietly that he was a relation
of Trevithick, and could bring them together
within a few hours of their arrival. The result
of that bringing together was, that in September,
1814, three engineers and nine of Trevithick's
engines — Watt and Boulton would not
touch the enterprise, and laughed the whole
thing to scorn— embarked for Lima and the
rich silver mines of Peru. Uvillé and his charge
landed under a royal salute, expectation being
raised to its highest, and in due time the
engines, which had been, "simplified to their
greatest extent, so divided as to form adequate
loads for the weakly llama, and the beams and
boilers made in several pieces, were transported;
over precipices where a stone may be thrown for
a league."

The engine was erected at Lauricocha, in the
province of Tarma, and the first shaft of the
Santa Rosa mine was drained to perfection. In
1817, Trevithick, hearing of this success, gave
up family and fortune, home, wife, and children,
and embarked for South America. The whole
of Lima was in a ferment. When he landed he
was received with the highest honours; his arrival
was officially announced in the Government
Gazette; the viceroy met him with enthusiasm,
and the Lord Warden of the Mines was ordered to
escort him with a guard of honour to the " seat
of his future labours." When the people found
that his engines cleared the mines of water, that
the mines yielded double produce, and that the
coining-machinery was increased sixfold, they
were beside themselves with joy. Trevithick
was created a marquis and grandee of old Spain,
and the Lord Warden of the Mines proposed to
raise a silver statue in honour of this commercial
Las Casas, this Columbus of the Cordilleras,
this greatest of all living engineers, this most
valiant of Cornishmen, Don Ricardo Trevithick.

Everything looked bright until the revolution
began, and the Cornish engineer found
himself in a sufficiently disagreeable position
between the two parties. The patriots kept
him in the mountains, in a kind of honourable
captivity, holding him as the Plutus of the
war; while the royalists, holding him as precisely
the same thing, "as the great means
whereby the patriots obtained the sinews of war,
ruined his property wherever they could, and
mutilated his engines." They sold his shares, and
alienated his mines; Trevithick, never very patient,
soon determined to put an end to this kind