The result to Trevithick was, that he and his partners in the Mining Company were consigned to ruin. It has been said that the engineer joined the patriotic party, and invented for Lord Cochrane an ingenious gun-carriage centred and equally balanced on pivots, and easily worked by machinery; but of this no mention is made by Lord Cochrane in his "Memoirs." The Patriots kept Trevithick on the mountains as a sort of patron and protector of their interests; but for this very reason he became proportionately obnoxious to the Royalists, who, looking upon him as the agent through whom the patriotic party obtained the sinews of war, destroyed his engines, and broke up his machinery wherever they could. At length he determined to escape from Peru, and fled northward across the mountains, accompanied by a single friend, making for the Isthmus of Panamá. In the course of this long, toilsome, and dangerous journey, he encountered great privations; he slept in the forest at night, traveled on foot by day, and crossed the streams by swimming. At length, his clothes torn, worn, and hanging almost in shreds, and his baggage all lost, he succeeded in reaching the port of Cartagena, on the Gulf of Darien, almost destitute. Here he encountered Robert Stephenson, who was waiting at the one inn of the place until a ship was ready to set sail for England. Stephenson had finished his engagement with the Colombian Mining Company for which he had been working, and was eager to return home. When Trevithick entered the room in which he was sitting, Stephenson at once saw that he was an Englishman. He stood some six feet in height, and, though well proportioned when in ordinary health, he was now gaunt and hollow, the picture of privation and misery. Stephenson made up to the stranger, and was not a little surprised to find that he was no other than the famous engineer, Trevithick, the builder of the first patent locomotive, and who, when he last heard of him, was accumulating so gigantic a fortune in Peru. Though now penniless, Trevithick was as full of speculation as ever, and related to Stephenson that he was on his way home for the purpose of organizing another gold-mining company, which should make the fortunes of all who took part in it. He was, however, in the mean time, unable to pay for his passage, and Stephenson lent him the requisite money for the purpose of reaching his home in Cornwall. As there was no vessel likely to sail for England for some time, Stephenson and Trevithick took the first ship bound for New York. After a stormy passage, full of adventure and peril, the vessel was driven on a lee-shore, and the passengers and crew barely escaped with their lives. On reaching New York, Trevithick immediately set sail for England, and he landed safe at Falmouth in October, 1827, bringing back with him a pair of silver spurs, the only remnant which he had preserved of those "torrents of silver" which his engines were to raise from the mines of Peru.