Then we walked to the United Mines in Gwennap.  The day was very fine and now it was perfectly broiling:  and the hills here are long and steep.  At the United Mines we found the Captain, and he invited us to join in a rough dinner, to which he and the other captains were going to sit down.  Then we examined one of the great pumping engines, which is considered the best in the country:  and some other engines.  Between 3 and 4 there was to be a setting out of some work to the men by a sort of Dutch Auction (the usual way of setting out the work here):  some refuse ores were to be broken up and made marketable, and the subject of competition was, for how little in the pound on the gross produce the men would work them up.  While we were here a man was brought up who was hurt in blasting:  a piece of rock had fallen on him.  At this mine besides the ladder ways, they have buckets sliding in guides by which the men are brought up:  and they are just preparing for work another apparatus which they say is tried successfully at another mine (Tresavean):  there are two wooden rods A and B reaching from the top to the bottom, moved by cranks from the same wheel, so that one goes up when the other goes down, and vice versa:  each of these rods has small stages, at such a distance that when the rod A is down and the rod B is up, the first stage of A is level with the first stage of B:  but when the rod A is up and the rod B is down, the second stage of A is level with the first stage of B:  so a man who wants to descend steps on the first stage of A and waits till it goes down:  then he steps sideways on the first stage of B and waits till it goes down:  then he steps sideways to the second stage of A and waits till it goes down, and so on:  or if a man is coming up he does just the same.  While we were here Mr R. Taylor came.  We walked home (a long step, perhaps seven miles) in a very hot sun.  Went to tea to Mr Alfred Fox, who has a house in a beautiful position looking to the outside of Falmouth Harbour.

* * * * *

PENZANCE,
1845, June 14, Saturday.

Yesterday morning we breakfasted early at Falmouth, and before 9 started towards Gwennap.  I had ascertained on Thursday that John Williams (the senior of a very wealthy and influential family in this country) was probably returned from London.  So we drove first to his house Burntcoose or Barncoose, and found him and his wife at home. (They are Quakers, the rest of the family are not.) Sedgwick, and Whewell, and I, or some of our party including me, had slept once at their house.  They received George and me most cordially, and pressed us to come and dine with them after our visit to Tresavean mine, of which intention I spoke in my last letter:  so I named 4 o’clock as hour for dinner.  After a little stay we drove to Tresavean, where I found the Captain of the mine