GEORGE STEPHENSON. 85 



An equal amount of terror was created in some minds by the 

 steam-carriage of Richard Trevithick, an eccentric engineer 

 connected with the Cornish tin-mines, who had seen Murdoch's 

 small carriage. In 1802 he took out a patent for this novel 

 machine, which was exhibited to large crowds of spectators 

 on what is now the site of Euston station. Coleridge 

 relates that, when it was being conveyed from the place in 

 Cornwall where it was constructed to the port at which it was 

 shipped to London, after carrying away a portion of the 

 rails of a gentleman's garden, it came in sight of a closed 

 toll-gate. Trevithick immediately shut off the steam, but the 

 momentum was so great that the carriage proceeded some 

 distance, coming dead up, however, just on the right side of 

 the gate, which was opened like lightning by the gatekeeper. 

 "Wliat have us got to pay here?" asked Trevithick's cousin, 

 Andrew Vivian, who accompanied him. The poor toll-man, 

 trembling in every limb, his teeth chattering in his head, 

 essayed a reply: "Na, na, na, na."' "What have us got to 

 pay, I say?" "No — noth — nothing to pay! My dear Mr. 

 Devil, do drive on as fast as you can ! Nothing to pay ! " 



Trevithick constructed another steam-carriage for railway 

 purposes, which, in 1804, ran on the Merthyr-Tydvil tramway 

 in South Wales. It drew a load of ten tons at the rate of five 

 miles an-hour. 



The earliect locomotives were designed to run upon a 

 perfectly smooth line and a straight road, and for many years 

 it was supposed that they could not climb hills or be made to 

 go round corners unless the wheels were provided with a cogged 

 rim to work on a corresponding rack along the rails. The 

 cogged or toothed wheels and rails were introduced in 181 1 

 by Mr. Blenkinsop, of Leeds. It was not till 1813 that Mr. 



