Boulton, as usual, led a very active life in Cornwall. Much of his time was occupied in riding from mine to mine, inspecting the engines at work, and superintending the erection of others. The season being far advanced, the weather was bad, and the roads miry; but, wet or dry, he went his rounds. In one of his letters he gives an account of a miserable journey home on horseback, on a certain rainy, windy, dark night in November, when he was “caught in water up to 12 hands.” “It is very disagreeable,” he adds, “that one cannot stay out till dark upon the most emergent business without risking one’s life.” But once at home he was happy. “The greatest comfort I find here,” he says, “is in being shut out from the world, and the world from me. At the same time I have quite as much visiting as I wish for.” One of his favourite amusements was collecting and arranging fossils, some for his friend Wedgwood, and others for his own “fossilry” at Soho. Boulton was well supported out of doors by William Murdock, now regarded as “the right hand” of the concern in Cornwall. “Murdock hath been indefatigable,” he wrote Watt, “ever since they began [at Wheal Virgin new Engine]. He has scarcely been in bed or taken necessary food.... After slaving day and night on Thursday and Friday, a letter came from Wheal Virgin that he must go instantly to set their engine to work or they would let out the fire. He went and set the engine to work: it worked well for the five or six hours he remained. He left it and returned to the Consolidated Mines about eleven at night, and was employed about the engines till four this morning, and then went to bed. I found him at ten this morning in Poldice Cistern, seeking for pins and casters that had jumped out, when I insisted on his going home to bed.”[249] [249] Boulton to Watt, 30th September, 1782. On one occasion, when an engine superintended by Murdock stopped through some accident occurring to it, the water rose in the mine, and the miners were drowned out. Upon this occurring, they came “roaring at him” for having thrown them out of work, and threatened to tear him to pieces. Nothing daunted, he went through the midst of the men, and proceeded to the invalided engine, which he succeeded in very shortly repairing and setting to work again. The miners were so rejoiced that they were carried by their feelings into the opposite extreme; and when he came out of the engine-house they cheered him vociferously, and insisted upon carrying him home on their shoulders in triumph!