So much as the foregoing seemed necessary in order to rightly estimate Trevithick's position and surroundings when he had arrived at the age of twenty-six. But it will now be desirable to retrace our steps, and begin at the beginning. He was born in the centre of a group of some of our most important Cornish mines, in the parish of Illogan, on the 13th April, 1771, one of a family of five, of whom Richard was the only surviving son, and, as a matter of course, his mother's pet. One can picture the tall, sturdy lad, 'creeping reluctantly' to the little school at Camborne, where he was reputed a lazy, inattentive, and obstinate pupil, always drawing upon his slate lines and figures, unintelligible to any but himself, but, likely enough, containing the germs of those inventions which were destined hereafter to contribute largely to the success of Cornish mining, and make his own name famous. As he grew up he seems to have been more noted as a wrestler, and for his feats of strength, than for anything else, except, perhaps, for his rapid power as a mental arithmetician. He was a great hand at throwing the sledge-hammer, and could lift half-a-ton. A huge mass of iron of about this weight, which tradition says Trevithick used to lift, is still shown at the Patent Museum, South Kensington. He would climb the mine-shears--a height of fifty or sixty feet--stand, balancing himself on the summit, and then and there swing round his sledge-hammer 'to steady his head and foot.' There is a story told of his being attacked by pickpockets while walking with his friend, Captain Andrew Vivian, in London; but Trevithick seized two of them, knocked their heads together, and then flung them away from him in opposite directions, not to return to the Tartar whom they had caught! The mark was long shown on the ceiling of Dolcoath account-house, which was imprinted by the _heels_ of one Captain Hodge, who had dared Trevithick to try a fall with him, but who found himself first flying through the air, and then flat on his back on the table, before he knew what had happened! But Richard Trevithick was endowed with something more than mere physical strength; for, having first received some instruction in his calling from an engineer, well-known in Cornwall, of the name of Bull, he at length got to work, in 1790, at Stray Park Mine, at 30s. a month. Whilst here he was selected, when only twenty-one years of age, to report upon the relative merits of Watt's and Hornblower's engines, a fact which, surely, speaks volumes for his powers of observation, and for the solidity of his judgment.