32 VARIOUS INVENTIONS. 



the boiler to the middle of the stuffing box to prevent the 

 escape of steam. 



" I am sorry to find by Mr. Uville's letter that the Mint 

 engine does not go well. 1 wish you had put the fire under the 

 boiler and through the tube, as I desired you to do, in the usual 

 way of the long boilers ; then you might have made your fire- 

 place as large as you pleased, which would have answered the 

 purpose and worked with wood just as well as with coal. I 

 always told you that the fire-place in the boiler was large enough 

 for coal, but not for wood ; also if you found that the cock did not 

 open and shut in proper time, to make the gear to it work the 

 same as the Dolcoath puffer whim-engine instead of the circular 

 gear. The boiler is strong enough and large enough to work 

 this engine with 30 Ibs. to the inch, thirty strokes per minute. I 

 hope to leave Cornwall for Lima about the end of this month, 

 and go by way of Buenos Ayres, and cross over the continent of 

 South America, because I cannot get any other passage. None 

 of the South Sea whalers will engage to take me to Lima, as 

 they say they may touch at Lima or they may not. Unless I 

 give them an immense sum they will not engage to drop me 

 there. To be brought back to England after a two years' voyage 

 without seeing Lima would be a very foolish trip. To make a 

 certainty I shall take the first ship for Buenos Ayres, prepara- 

 tions for which I have already made." 



This unfinished rough draft was intended for one of 

 the men who had gone to Lima, less fruitful in emer- 

 gency than Trevithick, who, without a moment's hesi- 

 tation, would have constructed a fire-place outside the 

 boiler, when the internal tube fire-place was found to 

 be too small for a wood fire. Trevithick's proposing 

 sixty years ago to make his way over the almost un- 

 known track from Buenos Ayres, on the Atlantic, to 

 Lima, on the Pacific, was perhaps characteristic of his 

 daring spirit, that turned all things to good account ; 

 but he dreamed not that his grandson and namesake 

 would at this time be conducting the steam-horse on the 



