I cannot close my short additions to Camborne without noticing Mr. Richard Trevithick. No one, with the exception of Mr. Watt, has probably contributed in so great a degree to the improvement of steam-engines, the most important and the most philosophical of all mechanical inventions. His enterprise has also equalled the abstract powers of his mind, and for several years he laboured in South America to give the mines of that great continent the advantage of European machinery; but civil wars, and the instability of Governments, defeated his best endeavours, so as to render them, up to the present time, unavailing either to those mines or to himself.
Camborne contains 5933 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 11,783 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rates in 1831 | 2,649 | 16 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 4811 | in 1811, 4714 | in 1821, 6219 | in 1831, 7699; |
giving an increase of 60 per cent. in 30 years.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The eastern and south-western sides of this parish are situate on granite, the greater part consisting of high and barren hills, including Carnbrea and Carnkie. This rock is large-grained, and not very prone to disintegrate; it is occasionally traversed by beds of felspar porphyry.
On the boundaries of this granite, and in the adjacent slate, are numerous tin and copper-mines, the most interesting of which are Delcoath and Cock’s Kitchen; the latter extends into the parish of Illogan, but is a continuation of the Camborne lodes. Delcoath has been for many years the deepest mine in Cornwall. It stands at the surface, about fifty fathoms (300 feet) above the level of the sea, and the deepest shaft is about a hundred and eighty fathoms (1080 feet) below the sea level, making on the whole a depth from the surface of nearly 1400 feet.
These mines exhibit the curious geological phenomena of alternating granite and slate; that is, in sinking a perpendicular shaft, the miner passes repeatedly out of one of these rocks into the other. Various theoretical opinions have been entertained on this subject: some geologists supposing that the layers are no more than irregular protuberances from the main mass of the rock; whilst others consider them as large veins dipping towards and communicating with the granite at a great depth. But it is ascertained that these granite layers are sometimes detached or insulated masses, whilst at other times they form large veins or courses, which have regular bearings to a considerable distance, and are then called elvans; to form, however, a correct idea of the features of these phenomena, we must become acquainted, not with the appearance only, but with the nature and composition of these two rocks.