The strange gentleman referred to was Don Francisco Uville, a person of great influence in Lima, who a year or two before had travelled from Peru to England and back, in search of steam-engines to pump water from the ancient gold and silver mines then flooded and idle. Boulton and Watt, at Soho, on being consulted, discouraged the attempt, because of the difficulty of conveying heavy machinery over mountain pathways, and also because their low-pressure vacuum engine, using steam but slightly above atmospheric pressure, would be much less effective in the comparatively light atmosphere on the high summits of the Cordillera Mountains than in England. Uville, who had heard of the wonderful ability of English engineers to construct steam pumping engines, was utterly downhearted at this decision of the great Soho engineers, and while dejectedly wandering through the streets of London, unconsciously gazed into the shop window of Mr. Roland in Fitzroy Square, near the spot on which Trevithick had run his railway locomotive three years before.[120] Rumour of passed events may have led him to visit the ground on which had worked a new kind of steam-engine. His searching glance discovered among numerous articles for sale, an unknown form that might be the talisman he had travelled thousands of miles in search of. The shopkeeper informed him that it was a model of Richard Trevithick's high-pressure steam-engine, which worked without condensing water, or vacuum. If what he heard was true, why should it not work equally well in the light atmosphere of the mines? The great engineer at Soho might be in error or ignorance. The experiment, as a last resource, was worth making. He would pay the 20_l._ for the model, carry it to the mines of Cerro de Pasco, in the high mountains above Lima, where, if it worked as well as it did in London, the rich mines of Peru would again reveal their long-hidden treasure. The model was conveyed by ship to Lima, and then on a mule up the narrow precipitous ascents to Cerro de Pasco, over mountains more than 20,000 feet high. Fire was placed in the small boiler as he had seen it done in London, and with the same result, to the great joy of Uville, who determined to revisit England in search of the inventor of this new and wonderful power. On his return voyage, when rounding Cape Horn, bets were made on the chances of his finding the man who had invented the high-pressure steam-puffer engine,[121] and of his being able to persuade such a person to make the required engines and accompany them to Peru. Such gloomy forebodings ended in an attack of brain fever. The vessel touched at Jamaica, where Uville was landed. On recovering health and strength he embarked for England in one of the packet-ships, and during the voyage still spoke of the object of his search. A fellow-traveller, called Captain Teague, rejoiced him by saying, "I know all about it; it is the easiest thing in the world.