[45] Mr. Lemon eventually became the principal merchant and tin-smelter of Cornwall. Mr. Davies Gilbert says:--“The energies of his mind were not limited to these undertakings, great though they were. He cultivated a taste for literature, and, which is extremely unusual, acquired, amidst business, and at a middle age, the power of reading the classic authors in their original language.... He was distinguished in his district as “the great Mr. Lemon,” but such were the impressions of his abilities, his exertions, and general merit, that a progress so rapid and unexampled does not appear to have excited envy, or any of those bad passions which usually alloy the enjoyment of prosperity.”--‘History of Cornwall,’ ii. 84. The Wheal Fortune engine was on a larger scale than any that had yet been erected, the cylinder being 47 inches in diameter, making about fifteen strokes a minute. It drew about a hogshead of water at each stroke, from a pump 30 fathoms deep, through pit-barrels 15 inches in diameter, and its performances were on the whole regarded as very extraordinary. The principal objection to its use consisted in the very large quantity of coal that it consumed and the heavy cost of maintaining it in working order. There was a great waste, especially in boilers, the making of which was then ill understood. Smeaton relates that in the course of four years’ working of the first Austhorpe engine, not fewer than four boilers were burnt out. The Wheal Fortune engine, however, answered its purpose. It kept down the water sufficiently to enable Mr. Lemon to draw up his tin, and on leaving the mine, he took with him to Truro a clear sum of ten thousand pounds. The engine-house is now in ruins, and presents a highly picturesque appearance, as seen from the heights of Trewal, reminding one of a Border Peel rather than of a mining engine-house. [Illustration: RUINS OF WHEAL FORTUNE. [By R. P. Leitch.]] Another of Newcomen’s engines was erected about the same time at the Wheal Rose mine, a few miles north of Redruth. The engineer appointed to superintend its erection was Joseph Hornblower, who came from Staffordshire for the purpose about the year 1725. Mr. Cyrus Redding, one of Hornblower’s descendants, says, “how he became in any way connected with Newcomen must have arisen from the latter being at Bromsgrove, when he visited Mr. Potter, who got him to build one of his newly-invented engines at Wolverhampton in 1712.”[46] Another engine was afterwards erected by Hornblower at Wheal Busy, or Chacewater, and a third at Polgooth--all rich and well-known mines in Cornwall. [Illustration: POLGOOTH.]