Cornwall being a land of mines has developed machinery and furthered invention in this direction. The most notable of the inventors she has produced is Richard Trevithick, who first made the high-pressure engine, and is still more remarkable as the early pioneer of motor traffic, putting his road locomotive on the Camborne highway on Christmas Day, 1801, and obtaining a speed with it of 12 miles per hour. In 1812 he laid before the Navy Board his invention for a screw propeller for ships, only to meet with a refusal. Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, born in 1793, also ran steam-motors on the roads until they were forbidden by Act of Parliament, and the work of a lifetime and his fortune of £30,000 vanished into thin air. The oxy-hydrogen blowpipe and the steam-jet were invented by him. The wreck of H.M.S. _Anson_ on Looe bar with the loss of over 100 lives in 1807 had a great effect on one of the spectators, Henry Trengrouse, a Helston cabinet-maker, who thereupon invented the rocket life-saving apparatus and spent £3000--all his means--in experiments and in vain endeavours to induce Government to adopt the system. Another great benefactor to mankind was Sir Humphry Davy, the son of a poor gilder near Penzance. His safety-lamp he nobly refused to patent lest the sphere of its usefulness should be restricted, and he is fittingly honoured with a statue in his native town. [Illustration: Sir Humphry Davy] More than one distinguished traveller finds place among Cornish worthies. Richard Lander, the son of a Truro innkeeper (1805-34), stands at the head of them. He went with Clapperton to Sokoto and on his death took up his work, tracing the mouth of the Niger on a second expedition, and dying on a third at Fernando Po. Peter Mundy, born about 1596 at "Penrin, a pretty towne in Corne Wall," as he describes it, was one of the most remarkable travellers that the West of England has produced, whether in virtue of his long trading voyages to the Far East, or of his continental wanderings, of which he kept a not less careful record. James Silk Buckingham, who died in 1855, wrote eighteen books of travel, but was mainly noteworthy for his endeavours to do away with the monopoly of the East India Company.