Several other orders were promised, conditional on the performances of the Wheal Busy engine proving satisfactory. “Ale and Cakes,”[158] wrote Watt, “must wait the result of Chacewater: several new engines will be erected next year, for almost all the old mines are exhausted, or have got to the full power of the present engines, which are clumsy and nasty, the houses cracked, and everything dropping with water from their cisterns.”[159] [158] A mine so-called. Many of the Cornish mines have very odd names. “Cook’s Kitchen,” near Camborne, is one of the oldest and richest. Another is called “Cupboard.” There are also Wheal Fannys and Wheal Abrahams; and Wheal Fortunes and Wheal Virgins in great numbers. [159] Watt to Boulton, 14th August, 1777. Watt liked the people as little as he did their engines. He thought them ungenerous, jealous, and treacherous. “Certainly,” said he, “they have the most ungracious manners of any people I have ever yet been amongst.” At the first monthly meeting of the Wheal Virgin adventurers, which he attended, he found a few gentlemen, but “the bulk of them would not be disgraced by being classed with Wednesbury colliers.” What annoyed him most was, that the miners invented and propagated all sorts of rumours to his prejudice. “We have been accused,” said he, “of working without leather upon our buckets, and making holes in the clacks in order to deceive strangers.... I choose to keep out of their company, as every word spoken by me would be bandied about and misrepresented. I have already been accused of making several speeches at Wheal Virgin, where, to the best of my memory, I have only talked about eating, drinking, and the weather. The greater part of the adventurers at Wheal Virgin are a mean dirty pack, preying upon one another, and striving who shall impose most upon the mine.”[160] Watt was of too sensitive and shrinking a nature to feel himself at home amongst such people. Besides, he was disposed to be peevish and irritable, easily cast down, and ready to anticipate the worst. It had been the same with him when employed amongst the rough labourers on the Monkland Canal, where he had declared himself as ready to face a loaded cannon as to encounter the altercations of bargain-making. But Watt must needs reconcile himself to his post as he best could; for none but himself could see to the proper erection of the Wheal Busy engine and get it set to work with any chance of success. Meanwhile, the native engineers were stimulated by his presence, and by the reputed power of the new engine, to exert themselves in improving the old one. Bonze was especially active in contriving new boilers and new arrangements, by which he promised to outstrip all that Watt could possibly accomplish.[161] [160] Watt to Boulton, 25th August, 1777. Boulton MSS.