154 STEPHENSON RECOMMENDS LOCOMOTIVE POWER. CHAP. IX. 



f which Mr. Pease was disposed to concur with him. The 

 conversation next turned on the tractive power which 

 the company intended to employ, and Mr. Pease said 

 that they had based their whole calculations on the em- 

 ployment of horse power. " I was so satisfied," said he 

 afterwards, " that a horse upon an iron road would draw 

 ten tons for one ton on a common road, that I felt sure 

 that before long the railway would become the King's 

 highway." 



But Mr. Pease was scarcely prepared for the bold 

 assertion made by his visitor, that the locomotive engine 

 with which he had been working the Killingworth Kail- 

 way for many years past was worth fifty horses, and 

 that engines made after a similar plan would yet entirely 

 supersede all horse power upon railroads. Mr. Stephenson 

 was daily becoming more positive as to the superiority 

 of his locomotive ; and on this, as on all subsequent 

 occasions, he strongly urged Mr. Pease to adopt it. 

 " Come over to Killingworth," said he, " and see what 

 my engines can do ; seeing is believing, sir." And 

 Mr. Pease promised that on some early day he would go 

 over to Killingworth with his friend Thomas Richardson, 

 and take a look at the wonderful machine that was to 

 supersede horses. 



On Mr. Pease referring to the difficulties and the op- 

 position which the projectors of the railway had had to 

 encounter, and the obstacles which still lay in their way, 

 Stephenson said to him, " I think, sir, I have some know- 

 ledge of craniology, arid from w T hat I see of your head, 

 I feel sure that if you will fairly buckle to this railway, 

 you are the man successfully to carry it through." " I 

 think so, too," rejoined Mr. Pease; "and I may observe 

 to thee, that if thou succeed in making this a good rail- 

 way, thou may consider thy fortune as good as made." 

 He added that all they would require at present was an 

 estimate of the cost of re-surveying the line, with the 

 direction of which the company were not quite satisfied ; 



