VARIOUS INVENTIONS. 31 



having engaged with Crovernment to deliver three 

 million tons of stone ; and to prevent delay, the boring 

 apparatus was applied to an engine made for another 

 purpose, while drawings for a new and more suitable 

 engine for boring stone were sent to Mr. Rastrick. 



He engaged that an engine should bore holes to split 

 100 tons of limestone a day ; and that on the following 

 day it should, as a locomotive and steam-crane, load 

 that quantity in waggons, convey it from the quarry 

 to the port of shipment, and then by steam-crane place 

 it in the hold of a vessel. The whole of the work to 

 be done by 11 cwt. of coal and four men. The gross 

 cost would be Is. per ton for breaking and removing, 

 though at that time Mr. Rennie was paying 2s. 9c. a 

 ton, which in after years was reduced to Is., just what 

 Trevithick said was a fair price. 



While this ready application of the high-pressure 

 steam-engine was going on in England, it had also 

 extended to, and was coining money in the Mint at, 

 Lima, where Trevithick contemplated going to look 

 after it, intending to land at Buenos Ayres, and make 

 his way across the continent of South America and the 

 mountains of the Cordilleras as best he could, leaving 

 the home field he had made so fertile to be reaped by 

 others, and the stone-boring locomotive to be forgotten 

 for many years. 



[Rough draft.] 



" SlRS, " PENZANCE, December 9^, 1815. 



" Your very great neglect in not writing .... Herland 

 engine will work, I expect, in about fifteen days. It is a 

 plunger of 33 inches diameter, 10-feet stroke, with a double 

 packing around the top of the plunger-pole, in the same way as 

 the steam is turned into the stuffing box of a double engine to 

 exclude the air, only there is a small tube from the bottom of 



