I stood in the face of the wind and
rain watching this a good while, and should have stood longer but that
I was so miserably wet. It appeared to me that the surf was higher
farther along the bank, but the air was so thickened by the rain and
the spray that I could not tell. When I returned the bad weather
abated. I have now borrowed somebody else's trowsers while mine are
drying (having got little wet in other parts, thanks to my great-coat,
which successfully brought home a hundredweight of water), and do not
intend to stir out again except perhaps to post this letter.
* * * * *
FLAMSTEED HOUSE,
_1842, May 15_.
Yesterday after posting the letter for you I went per steamboat to
Hungerford. I then found Mr Vignoles, and we trundled off together,
with another engineer named Smith, picking up Stratford by the way, to
Wormwood Scrubs. There was a party to see the Atmospheric Railway in
action: including (among others) Sir John Burgoyne, whom I met in
Ireland several years ago, and Mr Pym, the Engineer of the Dublin and
Kingstown Railway, whom I have seen several times, and who is very
sanguine about this construction; and Mr Clegg, the proposer of the
scheme (the man that invented gas in its present arrangements), and
Messrs Samuda, two Jews who are the owners of the experiment now going
on; and Sir James South! With the latter hero and mechanician we did
not come in contact.
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